"He unlocked the secret drawer of an iron strong-box, and taking therefrom a ring, placed it, with a peculiar smile, upon a finger of his right hand. It was a large and antique ring, which his father, who was a dealer in jewellery, had procured in Venice at a sale of the trinkets of the old Doge, Marc Antonio Mocenigo, who became the spouse of the Adriatic in 1701. This gold ornament was what was then termed a _Death Ring_, used when acts of poisoning were common in the seventeenth century. It was of the purest metal; but attached to the outside were two lion's claws, made of the keenest steel, and having in each a cleft that was filled with the most deadly poison. "In crowds, or balls, or elsewhere, the wearer of such a ring could exercise his secret revenge by the slightest scratch, in pressing the hand of the doomed person, who would next day be found, perhaps, in bed dead, no one knew why or how. So, armed with this most fatal trinket, M. d'Escombas came with Boisguiller to visit _me_. "I have but a vague recollection of the interview. He knew how passionately I had loved Isabelle, and I saw the savage gleam that crossed his eyes, when I inquired for her, but as one might inquire for a sister. He assured me in brief and hurried terms that she was well, content, and happy. Then I congratulated him with a tongue that clove to the roof of my mouth. "He rose, at last, to retire; bade me be of good heart, said his adieux, and pressing my hand, left me, with a dark smile in his eyes, which were small, black, glittering, and half obscured by their shaggy overhanging brows of grizzly hair, which, in fact, were like mustachios placed over his nose instead of below it. "Scarcely was he gone before I felt an indescribable sensation pass over all my body; my eyesight grew dim; my brain reeled, and my thoughts became delirious. Then every faculty seemed to become paralysed, and the doctors--in his excitement Boisguiller soon had half the medical faculty of Paris at my bedside--declared that I had been poisoned by some mineral substance. But poisoned by _whom_, and _how_? Ah, _le brigand!_ how little did we suspect! "Strong antidotes were applied, and after a time I recovered, for the poison in the ring had been placed there so many years ago that it had not retained sufficient strength to destroy life; but I leave you, Monsieur Gauntlet, to imagine the hatred and horror I had of the traitor d'Escombas when I came to know the actual object of his visit. "I recovered fully, and joined the army under the Marshals Contades and de Broglie, in Germany. So my Isabelle is still the wife of that man; but there is a sweet composure, a sadness of heart and of eye about her, a silence and enduring gentleness under the most insulting jealousy and coarse petty tyranny, which make all who know, pity her, and deplore the fate to which she has been consigned.