attached so
much importance to amusing the people whom he invited!

She listened and thought that Mr. Ruthven Smith and Lady Cartwright
seemed to have begun well. Then, as she turned to Lady Cartwright's
handsome husband (the Duchess of Peebles was talking to Dick
Annesley-Seton just then), she caught the word "latchkey."

It seized her attention. She knew they were speaking of the burglary at
Mrs. Ellsworth's house. She heard Ruthven Smith go on to explain in his
high-pitched voice that the two woman servants had been suspected, but
that their characters had "emerged stainless" from the examination.

"Besides," he continued, "neither of them had a latchkey to give to any
outside person. The two women slept together in one room. At the time of
the robbery there was no butler----"

Annesley heard no more. Suddenly the door of her spirit seemed to close.
She was shut up within herself, listening to some voice there.

"_What became of your latchkey?_" it asked.

The blood streamed to her face and made her ears tingle, as it used to do
when she had been scolded by Mrs. Ellsworth. If any one had looked at her
then, it must have been to wonder what Sir Elmer Cartwright or Lord John
Dormer had said to make Mrs. Nelson Smith blush so furiously.

She was remembering what she had done with her latchkey. She had given it
to Knight to open the front door, and so escape from the two watchers who
had followed them in a taxi to Torrington Square. She had never thought
of it from that moment to this. Could it be possible that some thief had
stolen the latchkey from Knight, and used it when Mrs. Ellsworth's house
was robbed?

Her thoughts concentrated violently upon the key. Had her neighbours
spoken she would not have heard; but they did not speak. She was free to
let her thoughts run where they chose. They ran back to the first night
of her meeting with Nelson Smith, and her arrival with him at the house
in Torrington Square. She recalled, as if it were a moment ago, putting
the key into his hand, which had been warm and steady, despite the danger
he was in, while hers had been trembling and cold. She said to herself
that she must ask Knight, as soon as they were alone together, what he
had done with the key, whether he had left it in the house or flung it
away.

But of course he must have left it in the house, or close by, otherwise
no thief would have known where it belonged. That made her feel guilty
toward Ruthven Smith.