She ought not to have been so utterly absorbed in
her own affairs that night. She ought to have asked to have the key back,
and then to have laid it where it could be found by Mrs. Ellsworth in the
morning.

Perhaps, indirectly, _she_ was responsible for the burglary at that
house. And, now she thought of it, what a queer burglary it had been! The
thieves must certainly have known something about Mrs. Ellsworth, or
else, in helping themselves to her valuables, it would not have occurred
to them to scrawl a sarcastic message.

That message had delighted Knight when he heard of it. He had laughed and
said, "I like those chaps! They can have _my_ money when they want it!"

Since then they _had_ had his money, and other possessions. If the theory
of the police were right, that a gang of foreign thieves was "working"
London, Annesley was glad that she and Knight had been robbed. It made
her feel less to blame for her carelessness in the matter of that
latchkey.

At least, she had suffered, too, and so had Knight.

Could it be, she asked herself, that the _watchers_ were somehow mixed
up in the business? Were _they_ members of the supposed gang? That did
not seem likely, for how could a man like Knight have got involved with
thieves? Yet it seemed, from what he had said that night at the
Savoy--and never referred to again--as if he were somehow in their power.

How curiously like one of them Morello had been! She remembered thinking
so, with a shock of fear. Then she had lost the feeling of resemblance,
and told herself that she must have imagined it.

The two faces came back to her now, and again she saw them alike. She was
glad that Knight had never invited Morello to call, and glad that when
grudgingly she had asked one day after the two men who had witnessed
their marriage, Knight had said, "Gone out of England. We just caught
them in time."

As for the watchers, she had heard no more of them. Knight ignored the
episode, or the part of it connected with those men. The memory of them
was shut up in the locked box of his past, and he never left the key
lying about, as apparently he had left the key of Mrs. Ellsworth's house.

Suddenly, while Annesley listened to Ruthven Smith, she became conscious
that, as he talked to Lady Cartwright, his eyes had turned to her.

"This proves," the fancy ran through her head, "that if you look at or
even think of people, you attract their attention."

She glanced away, and at