Then the door opened a crack, still without a sound, and a man with a black beard put in his head.  As he met her eyes fixed squarely upon him he closed the door as silently as a shadow.  She hurried after him and looked out, and ran up the corridor peering into every possible corner, but no man could she see.  He had disappeared as completely as if he had been a ghost.  She reported it to the proprietor, but he shrugged his shoulders, and said, “Madam must have imagined it!”

By this time we were all feeling rather creepy.  However, as Jimmie says when we are all tired out and hungry and cross, “Cheer up.  The worst is yet to come.”

One day my companion and Mrs. Jimmie and I went to one of the best shops in all Italy, to buy a ring.  Mrs. Jimmie was getting it for her husband’s birthday.

Now, Mrs. Jimmie’s own rings are extremely beautiful, and her very handsomest consists of a band of blue-white matched diamonds which exactly fills the space between her two fingers, and is so heavy and so fine that only Tiffany could duplicate it.  The band of the ring is merely a fine wire.  To try on Jimmie’s ring, Mrs. Jimmie took off all hers and laid them on the counter.  Now, mind you, this was a famous jeweller’s where this happened.  But when she had decided to take the new ring, and turned to put on her own again, lo! this especial ring was gone.  We searched everywhere.  We told the clerk, but he said she had not worn such a ring.  This was the first thing which made us suspect that something was wrong.  We insisted, and he reiterated.  Finally, I made up my mind.  I said to my companion:  “You stand at the front door and have Mrs. Jimmie stand at the side door.  Don’t you permit any one either to enter or leave, while I rush around to Cook’s office and find out what can be done.”  Both women turned pale, but obeyed me.  One clerk started for the back door, but we called him and told him that no one was to move until we could get the police there.  Then such a scurrying and such a begging as there was!  Would madam wait just one moment?  Would madam permit them to call the proprietor?  (Anybody would have thought it was my ring, for Mrs. Jimmie’s calm was not even ruffled, while I was in a white heat, and all their impassioned appeals were addressed to me!) I said they could call the proprietor if they could call him without leaving the room.  They called him in Italian.  He came, a little, smooth, brown man, with black, shoe-button eyes.  We explained to him just what had taken place, Mrs. Jimmie with her back against one door, and my companion braced against the side door, like Ajax defying the lightning.

He rubbed his hands, and listened to a torrent of excited Italian from no fewer than ten crazy clerks.  Then I stated the case in English.  The proprietor turned to Mrs. Jimmie, and said if madam was so sure that she had worn a ring, which all his clerks assured him she had not worn, then, for the honor of his house, he must beg madam to choose another ring, of whatever value she liked, and it should be a present from him!