"It was stupid in me," said Preston the next night, relating the incident to Miss Bowlsby. "I never once thought it might be a thing connected with the memory of his mother or sister, don't you see? I took it for a half sentimental souvenir of some flirtation." "Mr. Lynde's mother died when he was a child, and he never had a sister," said Miss Bowlsby thoughtfully. "I shouldn't wonder," she added irrelevantly, after a pause. "At what, Miss Mildred?" "At anything!" One of those womanly intuitions which set mere man-logic at defiance was come to whisper in Miss Bowlsby's ear that that slipper had performed some part in Edward Lynde's untold summer experience. "He was laughing at you, Mr. Preston; he was grossly imposing on your unsophisticated innocence." "Really? Is he as deep as that?" "He is very deep," said Miss Bowlsby solemnly. On his way home from the bank, one afternoon in that same week, Lynde overtook Miss Mildred walking, and accompanied her a piece down the street. "Mr. Lynde, shall you go on another horseback excursion next summer?" she asked, without prelude. "I haven't decided; but I think not." "Of course you ought to go." "Why of course, Miss Mildred?" "Why? Because--because--don't ask me!" "But I do ask you." "You insist?" "Positively." "Well, then, how will you ever return Cinderella her slipper if you don't go in search of her?" Lynde bit his lip, and felt that the blackest criminals of antiquity were as white as driven snow compared with Preston. "The prince in the story, you know," continued Miss Bowlsby, with her smile of ingenue, "hunted high and low until he found her again." "That prince was a very energetic fellow," said Lynde, hastily putting on his old light armor. "Possibly I should not have to travel so far from home," he added, with a bow. "I know at least one lady in Rivermouth who has a Cinderella foot." "She has two of them, Mr. Lynde," responded Miss Mildred, dropping him a courtesy. The poor little slipper's doom was sealed. The edict for its banishment had gone forth. If it were going to be the town's talk he could not keep it on his writing-desk. As soon as Lynde got back to his chambers, he locked up Cinderella's slipper in an old trunk in a closet seldom or never opened. The enchantment, whatever it was, was broken. Although he missed the slipper from among the trifles scattered over his table, its absence brought him a kind of relief. He less frequently caught himself falling into brown studies. The details of his adventure daily grew more indistinct; the picture was becoming a mere outline; it was fading away. He might have been able in the course of time to set the whole occurrence down as a grotesque dream, if he had not now and then beheld Deacon Twombly driving by the bank with Mary attached to the battered family carry-all. Mary was a fact not easily disposed of.