of intelligence. Sitting at night, reading under the drop-light, Lynde
often had an odd sensation as if the little shoe would presently come
tripping across the green table-cloth towards him. He had a hundred
fanciful humors growing out of that slipper. Sometimes he was tempted to
lock it up or throw it away. Sometimes he would say to himself, half
mockingly and half sadly, "That is your wife's slipper;" then he would
turn wholly sad, thinking how tragic that would be if it were really so.

It was a part of the girl's self; it had borne her lovely weight; it
still held the impress of her foot; it would not let Lynde entirely
forget her while it was under his eyes.

The slipper had stood on the writing-table four or five months--an
object of consuming curiosity and speculation to the young woman who
dusted Lynde's chambers--when an incident occurred which finally led to
its banishment.

Lynde never had visitors; there were few men of his age in the town, and
none was sufficiently intimate with him to come to his rooms; but it
chanced one evening that a young man named Preston dropped in to smoke a
cigar with Lynde. Preston had recently returned from abroad, where he
had been an attache of the American Legation at London, and was now
generally regarded as the prospective proprietor of Miss Mildred. He was
an entertaining, mercurial young fellow, into whose acquaintanceship
Lynde had fallen at the Bowlsbys'.

"Ah, you rogue!" cried Preston gayly, picking up the slipper. "Did she
give it you?"

"Who?" asked Lynde, with a start.