“‘I believe you,’ she said.  ’I believe, and I thank you.  Not a word to him that you have seen me’—­here she pointed to the sleeper by the fire.  ’He is faithful; but not to my interests alone.  I dare tell you no more—­at all events, not now.  Heaven bless and reward you.  In this portrait you give me the only treasure—­the only consolation of my future life!’

“So saying, she took a ring from her finger, pressed it, without another word, into my unwilling hand; and, with the same passive dreary look that her face had worn on first entering took up her lamp again, and glided from the room.

“How the next hour, or half hour, went by, I know not—­except that I sat before the canvas like one dreaming.  Now and then I added a few touches; but mechanically, and, as it were, in a trance of wonder and dismay.  I had, however, made such good progress before being interrupted, that when my companion woke and told me it would soon be day and I must make haste to be gone, the portrait was even more finished than I had myself hoped to make it in the time.  So I packed up my colors and palette again, and, while I was doing so, observed that he not only drew the cloth once more over the features of the dead, but concealed the likeness behind the altar in the oratory, and even restored the chairs to their old positions against the wall.  This done, he extinguished the solar lamp; put it out of sight; desired me once more to follow him; and led the way back along the same labyrinth of staircases and corridors by which he brought me.  It was gray dawn as he hurried me into the coach.  The blinds were already down—­the door was instantly closed—­again we seemed to be going through an infinite number of streets—­again we stopped, and I found myself at the corner of the Via Margutta.

“‘Alight, Signore,’ said the stranger, speaking for the first time since we started.  ’Alight—­you are but a few yards from your own door.  Here are a hundred scudi; and all that you have now to do, is to forget your night’s work, as if it had never been.’

“With this he closed the carriage-door, the horses dashed on again, and, before I had time even to see if any arms were blazoned on the panels, the whole equipage had disappeared.

“And here, strange to say, the adventure ended.  I never was called upon for evidence.  I never saw anything more of the stranger, or the lady.  I never heard of any sudden death, or accident, or disappearance having taken place about that time; and I never even obtained any clue to the neighborhood of the 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