Annesley's ears tingled as if they had been boxed. Could it be that Mrs. Ellsworth knew of the trick played on her—knew that her companion had not been to the Smiths'?
"I'm afraid I don't understand," she deprecated.
Mrs. Ellsworth sat in bed staring up at her. "Either you are a fool," she said, "or else I have caught you or him in a lie. I don't know which yet. But I soon shall. Perhaps you were not the only person in this house who went out to-night with a latchkey. Now do you guess?"
"No, I don't," the girl had to answer, though a dreadful idea was whirring an alarm in her brain.
"I dare say he is back before this, being more considerate of my feelings than you, and less noisy," went on the old woman, anxious to prove that Annesley Grayle and nobody else was responsible for keeping her from rest. "Anyhow, what a man does is not my business. What you do, is. Now, did or did not a certain person walk in and surprise you at the Archdeacon's? Don't stand there blinking like an owl. Speak out. Yes or no?"
"No," Annesley breathed.
"Then you haven't been to the Smiths'. I can more easily believe you are lying than he. Hark! There he comes. Isn't that a latchkey in the front door?"
"It—sounds like it. But—perhaps it's a mouse in the wall. Mice—make such strange noises."
"They're not making this one. He never could manage that key properly. Nobody with ears could mistake the sound, with both my door and the baize door open between, as they are now.
"No! You aren't to run and let him in. I don't want him to think we spy on him. He's free to come and go as he pleases, but I wish he wasn't so fond of surprises. It's not fair to me, at my time of life. As I was sitting down to dinner he walked in. Of course I had to ask him to dine, though there wasn't enough food for two. However, he refused, saying he would drop in at the Archdeacon's——"