“I ought to have defended myself more gently.  But forget everything and forgive me; I will defend myself no more in any way.  I am yours and I love you, and I am ready to prove my love.”

She could not have spoken more plainly, and as she spoke the last words she fell on me with her face close to mine, which she bedewed with her tears.  I was ashamed of such an easy conquest, and I gently withdrew from her embrace, telling her to return after the bruise on my face had disappeared.  She left me deeply mortified.

The Italian, who had taken half the suite of rooms, had arrived in the course of the night.  I asked his name, and was given a card bearing the name of The Marquis Don Antonio della Croce.

Was it the Croce I knew?

It was very possible.

I asked what kind of an establishment he had, and was informed that the marchioness had a lady’s maid, and the marquis a secretary and two servants.  I longed to see the nobleman in question.

I had not long to wait, for as soon as he heard that I was his neighbour, he came to see me, and we spent two hours in telling each other our adventures since we had parted in Milan.  He had heard that I had made the fortune of the girl he had abandoned, and in the six years that had elapsed he had been travelling all over Europe, engaged in a constant strife with fortune.  At Paris and Brussels he had made a good deal of money, and in the latter town he had fallen in love with a young lady of rank, whom her father had shut up in a convent.  He had taken her away, and she it was whom he called the Marchioness della Croce, now six months with child.

He made her pass for his wife, because, as he said, he meant to marry her eventually.

“I have fifty thousand francs in gold,” said he, “and as much again in jewellery and various possessions.  It is my intention to give suppers here and hold a bank, but if I play without correcting the freaks of fortune I am sure to lose.”  He intended going to Warsaw, thinking I would give him introductions to all my friends there; but he made a mistake, and I did not even introduce him to my Polish friends at Spa.  I told him he could easily make their acquaintance by himself, and that I would neither make nor mar with him.

I accepted his invitation to dinner for the same day.  His secretary, as he called him, was merely his confederate.  He was a clever Veronese named Conti, and his wife was an essential accomplice in Croce’s designs.

At noon my friend the hatter came again with the ring, followed by the owner, who looked like a bravo.  They were accompanied by the jeweller and another individual.  The owner asked me once more to lend him two hundred louis on the ring.

My proper course would have been to beg to be excused, then I should have had no more trouble in the matter; but it was not to be.  I wanted to make him see that the objection he made to having the stone taken out was an insuperable obstacle to my lending him the money.