"All is ended--and well," said Victorine; and, wiping a tear away, she turned to the company.
Madame Veh had been observant of this pair, and now whispered to Euchar--
"I told her everything. Was I right?"
"I must go through with the whole business," Euchar answered.
The company--as often happens in such circumstances--felt a fresh impulse to festivity and enjoyment in Euchar's unexpected return, and besieged him with enquiries as to where he had been and what had happened to him during his absence.
"What has really brought me here," said Euchar, "is the obligation which I am under to keep my promise of two years ago that I would tell you a good deal more of my friend Edgar's history, and put a copestone upon it such as our friend the Poet thought it wanted. As I can now assure you that no dark clouds have come over his path, that there have been no deeds of violence, but that, on the contrary, as the ladies wished, my story will be concerned with a rather romantic love-affair, I feel sure that I may reckon upon a fair measure of approval."
All applauded, and speedily formed into a narrower ring. Euchar at once commenced as follows--
I pass over in silence the warlike adventures which Edgar met with while fighting in company with the Guerillas--although they were sufficiently romantic--contenting myself with explaining that the talisman which Don Rafaele Marchez gave him when parting with him, was a little ring inscribed with mystic characters, which showed that he was an initiate in the most secret of the confederacies or societies; thus assuring him, wherever he might be, of the most absolute and unlimited confidence of those acquainted with those signs, and rendering all danger such as he had been exposed to in Valenzia impossible.
Soon afterwards he joined the English forces, and served under Wellington. He was never touched by a hostile bullet again, and when the campaign was over he returned to his own country safe and sound. Don Rafaele Marchez he had never seen again, nor had he heard anything of his further fortunes.
Edgar had been a long while back in his native town, when, one day, Don Rafaele's little ring (which he always wore on his finger) disappeared under peculiar circumstances. Early on the morning of the day following this, a queer little fellow came into his room, held the missing ring up to him, and asked him if it was his. When Edgar replied that it was, the little man cried out excitedly in Spanish--