She laughed and clapped her hands.

“Oh, I must have them,” she exclaimed.  “It would be ridiculous to go to Paris without them.  But why will you not get them yourself, Cesare, and bring them here to me?”

“There are so many,” I returned, quietly, “and I do not know which you would prefer.  Some are more valuable than others.  And it will give me a special satisfaction—­one that I have long waited for—­to see you making your own choice.”

She smiled half shyly, half cunningly.

“Perhaps I will make no choice,” she whispered, “perhaps I will take them all, Cesare.  What will you say then?”

“That you are perfectly welcome to them,” I replied.

She looked slightly surprised.

“You are really too good to me, caro mio,” she said; “you spoil me.”

“Can you be spoiled?” I asked, half jestingly.  “Good women are like fine brilliants—­the more richly they are set the more they shine.”

She stroked my hand caressingly.

“No one ever made such pretty speeches to me as you do!” she murmured.

“Not even Guido Ferrari?” I suggested, ironically.

She drew herself up with an inimitably well-acted gesture of lofty disdain.

“Guido Ferrari!” she exclaimed.  “He dared not address me save with the greatest respect!  I was as a queen to him!  It was only lately that he began to presume on the trust left him by my husband, and then he became too familiar—­a mistake on his part, for which you punished him—­as he deserved!”

I rose from my seat beside her.  I could not answer for my own composure while sitting so close to the actual murderess of my friend and her lover.  Had she forgotten her own “familiar” treatment of the dead man—­the thousand nameless wiles and witcheries and tricks of her trade, by which she had beguiled his soul and ruined his honor?

“I am glad you are satisfied with my action in that affair,” I said, coldly and steadily.  “I myself regret the death of the unfortunate young man, and shall continue to do so.  My nature, unhappily, is an oversensitive one, and is apt to be affected by trifles.  But now, mia bella, farewell until to-morrow—­happy to-morrow!—­when I shall call you mine indeed!”

A warm flush tinted her cheeks; she came to me where I stood, and leaned against me.

“Shall I not see you again till we meet in the church?” she inquired, with a becoming bashfulness.

“No.  I will leave you this last day of your brief widowhood alone.  It is not well that I should obtrude myself upon your thoughts or prayers.  Stay!” and I caught her hand which toyed with the flower in my buttonhole.  “I see you still wear your former wedding-ring.  May I take it off?”

“Certainly.”  And she smiled while I deftly drew off the plain gold circlet I had placed there nearly four years since.

“Will you let me keep it?”