She watched me as I fastened my coat and began to draw on my gloves.

“Are you going now?” she asked, somewhat timidly.

“Yes, I am going now, cara mia,” I said.  “Why! what makes you look so pale?”

For she had suddenly turned very white.

“Let me see your hand again,” she demanded, with feverish eagerness, “the hand on which I placed the ring!”

Smilingly and with readiness I took off the glove I had just put on.

“What odd fancy possesses you now, little one?” I asked, with an air of playfulness.

She made no answer, but took my hand and examined it closely and curiously.  Then she looked up, her lips twitched nervously, and she laughed a little hard mirthless laugh.

“Your hand,” she murmured, incoherently, “with—­that—­signet—­on it--is exactly like—­like Fabio’s!”

And before I had time to say a word she went off into a violent fit of hysterics—­sobs, little cries, and laughter all intermingled in that wild and reasonless distraction that generally unnerves the strongest man who is not accustomed to it.  I rang the bell to summon assistance; a lay-sister answered it, and seeing Nina’s condition, rushed for a glass of water and summoned Madame la Vicaire.  This latter, entering with her quiet step and inflexible demeanor, took in the situation at a glance, dismissed the lay-sister, and possessing herself of the tumbler of water, sprinkled the forehead of the interesting patient, and forced some drops between her clinched teeth.  Then turning to me she inquired, with some stateliness of manner, what had caused the attack?

“I really cannot tell you, madame,” I said, with an air of affected concern and vexation.  “I certainly told the countess of the unexpected death of a friend, but she bore the news with exemplary resignation.  The circumstance that appears to have so greatly distressed her is that she finds, or says she finds, a resemblance between my hand and the hand of her deceased husband.  This seems to me absurd, but there is no accounting for ladies’ caprices.”

And I shrugged my shoulders as though I were annoyed and impatient.

Over the pale, serious face of the nun there flitted a smile in which there was certainly the ghost of sarcasm.

“All sensitiveness and tenderness of heart, you see!” she said, in her chill, passionless tones, which, icy as they were, somehow conveyed to my ear another meaning than that implied by the words she uttered.  “We cannot perhaps understand the extreme delicacy of her feelings, and we fail to do justice to them.”

Here Nina opened her eyes, and looked at us with piteous plaintiveness, while her bosom heaved with those long, deep sighs which are the finishing chords of the Sonata Hysteria.

“You are better, I trust?” continued the nun, without any sympathy in her monotonous accents, and addressing her with some reserve.  “You have greatly alarmed the Count Oliva.”