I was thus allowed to become a constant visitor at the château d’Ionis, and this was, as regards the past, the happiest time of my life. I loved, under the ordinary conditions of life, a being above the ordinary region of life, an angel of goodness, of sweetness, of intelligence and of ideal beauty.
She did not leave me without hope and freely expressed her esteem and sympathy for me, but when I spoke of love, she seemed doubtful.
“Do not deceive yourself,” said she, “have you never loved, before you met me, and more than you loved me, a certain lady whose name my brother has refused to tell me?”
One day she said to me:
“Do you not wear on your finger, a certain ring that you regard as a talisman, and if I were to ask you to throw it into the fountain, would you obey me?”
“Certainly not,” I exclaimed, “I will never part with it, for it was you who gave it to me.”
“I, what do you mean by that?”
“Yes, it was you, do not try to conceal it any longer. It was you who enacted the role of the green lady to please Madame d’Ionis, who wished through you to pronounce her own ruin, and who thought she had found in me the person ‘worthy of belief,’ whose testimony her husband required. It was you who, yielding to her idea, appeared before me in fantastical guise, and prescribed my duty in conformity with your delicacy and pride of soul.”
“Well, yes, it was I!” she said. “It was I who came near destroying your reason, and who repented bitterly on learning too late, how much you had suffered from this romantic adventure. Once before they had tried you in a ghost scene, with which I had nothing to do. When they saw how brave you were, more courageous than the abbé Lamyre, upon whom Caroline had played a similar trick, to amuse herself, they thought they could treat you to an apparition, in which there would be nothing very terrifying. I happened to be here, secretly, as the dowager d’Ionis would not willingly have suffered my presence. Caroline, struck with my resemblance to the nymph of the fountain, conceived the idea of arranging my hair and dressing me in a similar style so that I should deliver my oracle in due form. Although the dictum was not such as she desired, it was nevertheless one that you have obeyed religiously, in not forgetting the care of our honor for a single moment. I left the next morning, and they kept me in ignorance of the fact that you had been seriously ill here, owing to this apparition. After your quarrel with Bernard, I was at Angers, and it was I who sent you the ring that I caused you to find in your room. This episode was due to Madame d’Ionis, who had two very old rings exactly alike, and who had previously arranged everything to carry out the romance. It was she who took it away from you during your fever, fearing that you should be too much excited by this appearance of reality, and preferring that you should think it all a dream.”
“And I never thought so, never! But how did it happen that you regained possession of this ring that was not your own?”