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 her neighbours. They were both absorbed for the moment; she need not worry lest they should find her neglectful. She took some asparagus which was offered to her, and began to eat it; but she still had the impression that Ruthven Smith was looking at her. She wondered why.
"He can't be expecting me to scream at him across the table," she thought.
"Yes," he was saying to Lady Cartwright, "it was a misfortune to lose those pearls. Two I had selected to make a pair of earrings can scarcely be duplicated. But none of the things stolen from me compared in value to those our agent lost on board the Monarchic. I suppose you read of that affair?"