Why, then, should Barnabas, chancing to catch sight of so ordinary an object, start up from his breakfast (ham and eggs, and fragrant coffee) and crossing the room with hasty step, pause to look down at this small and lonely object that lay so exactly in the middle of the long, deep window-seat? Why should his hand shake as he stooped and took it up? Why should the color deepen in his pale cheek?
And all this because of a solitary little shoe! A quite ordinary little shoe—to the casual observer! Oh, thou Casual Observer who seeing so much, yet notices and takes heed to so little beyond thy puny self! To whom the fairest prospect is but so much earth and so much timber! To whom music is but an arrangement of harmonious sounds, and man himself but a being erect upon two legs! Oh, thou Casual Observer, what a dull, gross, self-contented clod art thou, who, having eyes and ears, art blind and deaf to aught but things as concrete as—thyself!
But for this shoe, it, being something worn, yet preserved the mould of the little foot that had trodden it, a slender, coquettish little foot, a shapely, active little foot: a foot, perchance, to trip it gay and lightly to a melody, or hurry, swift, untiring, upon some errand of mercy.
All this, and more, Barnabas noted (since he, for one, was no casual observer) as he stood there in the sunlight with the little shoe upon his palm, while the ham and eggs languished forgotten and the coffee grew cold, for how might they hope to vie with this that had lain so lonely, so neglected and—so exactly in the middle of the window-seat?
Now presently, as Barnabas stood thus lost in contemplation of this shoe, he was aware of Peterby entering behind him, and instinctively made as if to hide the shoe in his bosom, but he checked the impulse, turned, and glancing at Peterby, saw that his usually grave lips were quivering oddly at the corners, and that he kept his gaze fixed pertinaciously upon the coffee-pot; whereat the pale cheek of Barnabas grew suffused again, and stepping forward, he laid the little shoe upon the table.
"John," said he, pointing to it, "have you ever seen this before?"
"Why, sir," replied Peterby, regarding the little shoe with brow of frowning portent, "I think I have."
"And pray," continued Barnabas (asking a perfectly unnecessary question), "whose is it, do you suppose?"
"Sir," answered John, still grave of mouth and solemn of eye, "to the best of my belief it belongs to the Lady Cleone Meredith."
"So she—really was here, John?"