Or, with an anxious look:—
'I hope Mary Quince is not easily frightened.'
Or, suddenly:—
'Can Mary Quince write, in case you were ill?'
Or,
'Can she take a message exactly?'
Or,
'Is she a person of any enterprise and resource, and cool in an emergency?'
Now, these questions did not come all in a string, as I write them down here, but at long intervals, and were followed quickly by ordinary talk; but they generally escaped from my companion after silence and gloomy thought; and though I could extract nothing more defined than these questions, yet they seemed to me to point at some possible danger contemplated in my good cousin's dismal ruminations.
Another topic that occupied my cousin's mind a good deal was obviously the larceny of my pearl cross. She made a note of the description furnished by the recollection, respectively, of Mary Quince, Mrs. Rusk, and myself. I had fancied her little vision of the police was no more than the result of a momentary impulse; but really, to judge by her methodical examinations of us, I should have fancied that she had taken it up in downright earnest.