Perhaps that house stood in some remote quarter of the city where my footsteps never went again--perhaps in some neighboring street or piazza, where I passed it every day! At all events, the whole thing vanished like a dream, and, but for the ring and the hundred scudi, a dream I should by this time believe it to have been.

The scudi, I am sorry to say, were spent within a month--the ring I have never parted from, and here it is." Hereupon the student took from his finger a superb ruby set between two brilliants of inferior size, and allowed it to pass from hand to hand, all round the table.

Exclamations of surprise and admiration, accompanied by all sorts of conjectures and comments, broke from every lip.
"The dead man was the lady's lover," said one.

"That is why she wanted his portrait." "Of course, and her husband had murdered him," said another.
"Who, then, was the man in black ?" asked a third.
"A servant, to be sure.

She said, if you remember, that he was faithful; but not devoted to her interests alone.