ck or
that other man, for you would have seen it on the road. So I allowed
it might have bin YOU. And yer it is." He slowly drew from his
pocket--what Key was fully prepared to see--the mate of the slipper Key
had in his saddle-bags! The fair fugitive had evidently lost them both.

But Key was better prepared now (perhaps this kind of dissimulation is
progressive), and quickly alive to the necessity of throwing Collinson
off this unexpected scent. And his companion's own suggestion was
right to his hand, and, as it seemed, again quite providential! He
laughed, with a quick color, which, however, appeared to help his lie,
as he replied half hysterically, "You're right, old man, I own up, it's
mine! It's d--d silly, I know--but then, we're all fools where women
are concerned--and I wouldn't have lost that slipper for a mint of
money."

He held out his hand gayly, but Collinson retained the slipper while he
gravely examined it.

"You wouldn't mind telling me where you mought hev got that?" he said
meditatively.

"Of course I should mind," said Key with a well-affected mingling of
mirth and indignation. "What are you thinking of, you old rascal?
What do you take me for?"

But Collinson did not laugh. "You wouldn't mind givin' me the size and
shape and general heft of her as wore that shoe?"

"Most decidedly I should do nothing of the kind!" said Key half
impatiently. "Enough, that it was given to me by a very pretty girl.
There! that's all you will know."

"GIVEN to you?" said Collinson, lifting his eyes.

"Yes," returned Key sharply.

Collinson handed him the slipper gravely. "I only asked you," he said
slowly, but with a certain quiet dignity which Key had never before
seen in his face, "because thar was suthin' about the size, and shape,
and fillin' out o' that shoe that kinder reminded me of some 'un; but
that some 'un--her as mought hev stood up in that shoe--ain't o' that
kind as would ever stand in the shoes of her as YOU know at all." The
rebuke, if such were intended, lay quite as much in the utter ignoring
of Key's airy gallantry and levity as in any conscious slur upon the
fair fame of his invented Dulcinea. Yet Key oddly felt a strong
inclination to resent the aspersion as well as Collinson's gratuitous
morality; and with a mean recollection of Uncle Dick's last evening's
scandalous gossip, he said sarcastically, "And, of course, that some
one YOU were thinking of was your lawful wife."