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“Oh! And by whom, pray?”

“By the countess?”

“In what way?”

“Hang it all, that name engraved as a talisman!… The mysterious Adonis who loved her and suffered for her sake!… All that story seems very unlikely; and I wonder whether, Lupin though you be, you did not just drop upon a pretty love-story, absolutely genuine and … none too innocent.”

Lupin looked at me out of the corner of his eye:

“No,” he said.

“How do you know?”

“If the countess made a misstatement in telling me that she knew that man before her marriage—and that he was dead—and if she really did love him in her secret heart, I, at least, have a positive proof that it was an ideal love and that he did not suspect it.”

“And where is the proof?”

“It is inscribed inside the ring which I myself broke on the countess’s finger … and which I carry on me. Here it is. You can read the name she had engraved on it.”

He handed me the ring. I read:

“Horace Velmont.”

There was a moment of silence between Lupin and myself; and, noticing it, I also observed on his face a certain emotion, a tinge of melancholy.