He did not know—how could he?—that her thoughts were running in the same direction as his own.
“You said,” he pursued, “that, when you were found by your good friends, you were wearing only one shoe. Did you—have you that shoe still?”
It was evident that he was agitated now. Miss Owen started, and he could feel her hand quiver within his grasp, like a frightened bird.
“Yes,” she answered in a whisper, above which she felt powerless to raise her voice, “I have kept it ever since.”
“Then,” he resumed, having now quite recovered his self-possession, “would you mind letting me see it?”
With a strong effort, she succeeded in maintaining her self-control.
“Oh no, not at all, sir!” she said, rising, and moving towards the door; “I’ll fetch it at once. But it isn’t much to look at now,” she added over her shoulder, as she left the room.
“‘Not much to look at’!” laughed “the Golden Shoemaker” softly to himself. There was nothing that he had ever been half so anxious to see!
Five minutes later he was sitting up in bed, turning over and over in his hands the fellow of the little shoe which he had cherished for so many years as the dearest memento of his lost child. Could there be any doubt? Was it not his own handiwork? It had evidently received several random slashes with a knife, and it still bore traces of mud. But he knew his own work too well; and had he not looked upon the fellow of this shoe every day for the last twelve years?
Strange to say, so completely absorbed was “Cobbler” Horn in contemplating the shoe which his Marian had worn, that, for the moment, he did not think of Marian herself. At length he looked up. But he was alone. Discretion, and the tumult of her emotions, had constrained the young secretary to withdraw from the room. Putting a strong hand upon herself, she had retired to the office, where she was, at that moment, diligently at work.