house in which these things took place. Often and
often afterwards, when I was strolling by night along the streets of
Rome, I lingered before some old palazzo, and fancied that I recognised
the gloomy outline that caught my eye in that hurried transit from the
carriage to the house. Often and often I paused and started, thinking
that I had found at last the very side-door by which I entered. But
these were mere guesses after all. 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. That meant that he would obey to
the extent of procuring for her the portrait of her lover; but that he
did not choose to betray his master, even though his master was a
murderer."

"But if so, where was the master?" said the first speaker. "Is it likely
that he would have neglected to conceal the body during all
these hours?"

"Certainly. Nothing more likely, if he were a man of the world, and knew
how to play his game out boldly to the end. Have we not been told that
it was the last night of the Carnival, and what better could he do, to
avert suspicion, than show himself at as many balls as he could visit in
the course of the evening? But really, this ring is magnificent!"

"Superb. The ruby alone must be worth a thousand francs."

"To say nothing of the diamonds, and the setting," observed the next to
whom it was handed.

At length, after having gone nearly the round of the table, the ring
came to a little dark, sagacious-looking man, just one seat beyond
Dalrymple's