In my earlier days, when as yet I had no fixed profession, during my travels in Italy, I became enamoured of a beautiful Italian girl. Poor Mariangela! how she loved me! That girl possessed the soul of an angel. I see her before me now, with her sweet, dreamy, saintlike eyes, and her quiet graceful step. We were never married, for I was not in a position then to support a wife. She vowed that she would never love anyone else but me. We parted, and--and--she died; died through love of me. (Here the lawyer became visibly affected and hastily brushed away a tear-drop with his hand. Mastering himself at length, he resumed.) On her death-bed she sent for me. I arrived just in time to catch her parting breath. When I stooped down to kiss her she hung a small relic of some saint that had been blessed by the Pope, suspended with a piece of ribbon, round my neck, and begged me to wear it for her sake, and said that it would preserve me from all harm. Poor girl! she died in my arms; I followed her to the grave and was for a long time inconsolable. But time, that changes everything, changed me. A tender recollection of her past love only remained; the wild tumultuous passion I had felt for her while living, and the overwhelming grief I experienced at her death, had subsided. For two years I wore the relic she gave me round my neck. Not because I believed in its virtue, not being a Roman Catholic myself, but for her sake alone--in remembrance of _her_. Afterwards, however, I wore it less often, and at length discontinued wearing it altogether. I kept it still at the bottom of my trunk, between the leaves of a book. This trunk I left in town when I went down to the Baron's. The key, I must tell you, I had lost a day or two before. I was just thinking of sending for the locksmith when I received the Baron's letter to come down to his place for a day or two. I left town hurriedly and the box behind me, locked--the key lost. Ever since poor Mariangela's death, even long after I had ceased to think of her regularly, I have remarked that in those periods of my life when I was in any difficulty her spirit used to appear to me in a dream and counsel me, and being guided by her counsel, I found my way invariably out of my dilemma. When weighed down by any great grief she was sure to appear and console me. That night when I turned into my snug little bed at "The Swan," no one was further from my thoughts than that poor Italian girl who loved me so well. My thoughts were far too full of ill-feeling towards the Baron and the preparations for the coming duel to allow room for anything else. Nevertheless, I had a most remarkable dream towards morning. I thought Mariangela came towards me as I lay in bed, and reproached me for having left off wearing the charm that she had hung round my neck.