The stone was translucent and faintly luminous like a moonstone, but held in its heart one fleck of ruby red, in appearance like a drop of blood.

By some curious trick of light, in whatever position the ring was held, this drop still appeared to be on the point of detaching itself and falling to the ground.
Earl William examined it in the flicker of the lamp.

He turned it every way, narrowly searching inside the golden band for a posy, but not a word of any language could he find engraved upon it.
"I saw the ring upon her hand--I am certain I saw it on her hand!" He said these words over and over to himself.

"It is then no dream that I have dreamed." There came a low knocking at the door, a rustling and a whispering without.

Instantly the Earl thrust the ring upon his own finger with the opal turned inward, and, with the dark anger mark of his race strongly dinted upon his fair young brow, he faced the unseen intruder.
"Who is there ?" he cried loudly and imperiously.
The door opened with a rasping of the iron latch, and a little girlish figure clothed from head to foot in a white night veil danced in.