The Master Mummer by E. Phillips Oppenheim

The perfume from a drooping lilac-bush a few feet away from the open casement was mingled with the fainter odour of jessamine and homely stocks. In the soft morning sunshine the terrors of last night seemed a thing far removed from us. We sat at breakfast in our little sitting-room, and as though by common though unspoken consent we treated the whole affair as a gigantic joke. We ignored its darker aspect. We spoke of it as an "opera-bouffe" attempt never likely to be repeated -- the hare-brained scheme of a mad foreigner, over anxious to earn the favour of his mistress. But beneath all our light talk was an undernote of seriousness. I think that Mabane and I, at any rate, realized perhaps for the first time that the situation, so far as Isobel was concerned, was fast becoming an impossible one.

After breakfast we all strolled out into the garden. Isobel, with her hands full of flowers, flitted in and out amongst the rose-bushes, laughing and talking with all the invincible gaiety of light-hearted youth, and Arthur hung all the while about her, his eyes following her every movement, telling her all the while by every action and look -- if indeed the time had come for her to discern such things -- all that our compact forbade him to utter. Presently I slipped away, and shutting myself up in the tiny room where I worked, drew out my papers. In a few minutes I had made a start. I passed with a little unconscious sigh of relief into the detachment which was fast becoming the one luxury of my life.