At last a most unmistakable puncture! the distinct, though slight, pang of a miniature wound. A crimson bead of blood rose on Otto’s finger, swelled to its due proportion, and became a trickling blot.
“She is thinking of me!” cried he rapturously, as if this were an instance of the most signal and unforeseen condescension. All the weary expectancy of the last six months was forgotten. He would have railed at himself had the bliss of the moment allowed him to remember that he had ever railed at her.
Otto turned his ring once, and Aurelia became visible in an instant. She was standing before the mercer’s booth in the chief street of the little town which adjoined her father’s castle. Her gaze was riveted on a silk mantle, trimmed with costly furs, which depended from a hook inside the doorway. Her lovely features wore an expression of extreme dissatisfaction. She was replacing a purse, apparently by no means weighty, in her embroidered girdle.
Otto turned the ring the second time, and Aurelia’s silvery accents immediately became audible to the following effect:
“If that fool Otto were here, he would buy it for me.”
She turned away, and walked down the street. Otto uttered a cry like the shriek of an uprooted mandrake. His hand was upon the ring to turn it for the third time; but the stranger’s warning occurred to him, and for a moment he forbore. In that moment the entire vision vanished from before his eyes.
What boots it to describe Otto’s feelings upon this revelation of Aurelia’s sentiments? For lovers, description would be needless; to wiser people, incomprehensible. Suffice it to say, that as his lady deemed him a fool he appeared bent on proving that she did not deem amiss.
A long space of time elapsed without any further admonition from the ring. Perhaps Aurelia had no further occasion for his purse; perhaps she had found another pursebearer. The latter view of the case appeared the more plausible to Otto, and it hugely aggravated his torments.
At last the moment came. It was the hour of midnight. Again Otto felt the sharp puncture, again the ruby drop started from his finger, again he turned the ring, and again beheld Aurelia. She was in her chamber, but not alone. Her companion was a youth of Otto’s age. She was in the act of placing Otto’s brilliant upon his finger. Otto turned his own ring, and heard her utter, with singular distinctness:
“This ring was given me by the greatest fool I ever knew. Little did he imagine that it would one day be the means of procuring me liberty, and bliss in the arms of my Arnold. My venerable grandmother—”