"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."

"It war!" said Collinson gravely.

Perhaps it was something in Collinson's manner, or his own
preoccupation, but he did not pursue the subject, and the
conversation lagged. They were nearing, too, the outer edge of the
present conflagration, and the smoke, lying low in the unburnt