Page:The Keepsake for 1838.djvu/242

 I purposed to be affianced to her; and, previously to the celebration of the ceremony, wished to try it on her finger. But she quickly withdrew her hand.

“Have patience,” she exclaimed, “for one brief moment.”

Then opening her jewel-case, she produced from it, to my utter amazement, my ring—the ring which I had believed to have been entombed with the remains of my ancestress,

“Behold your lost property,” she said; then placing it upon her finger, continued, “And now I have a request to make, which you must divine; for I shall not name it. My wishes are unspoken—but cannot you conjecture them?”

“To be affianced to me with that ring,” I replied readily, seeming to myself as though I were giving utterance to words which were outwardly suggested to me.

She smiled affirmatively.

“Strange coincidence!” I exclaimed involuntarily; for now that I was again required to fulfil the promise which I had made to the Wanderer of the haunted chamber; and that I was, for a second time, summoned by the wearer of that ring to guess and to grant her unuttered wish, I almost began to doubt whether Adelaide or her dead counterpart had really been my visitor on that memorable night.

In the possibility, however, that the ring might have been removed from the coffin without my knowlege, I now eagerly demanded how and whence she had obtained it? She replied, that it had been found where I had formerly suspected it was dropped, close to the secret door of the apartment.

This explanation only still further added to my confusion. Could there be two rings of undistinguishable similarity? Had the Silver Lady been originally entombed with that which I discovered on her finger? Or had mine, when she no longer needed it, as a pledge of my fidelity, been restored to the spot where a mortal last possessed it, but by no mortal means? In