The Argosy — page 214: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Sapphire Cross. 199 rather inclined to resent the unearthing of a new criminal, when one had been tried and comfortably condemned already. ‘“We will set the detectives at work, and try to obtain some trace of the jewels,” he said, and rose to put an end to the interview. CO ANRET E Re 1; CONCLUSION. Now it so happened that while Signor Renzo was endeavouring to bring a conviction of Count Cioronski’s guilt home to the mind of the King’s Proctor, Count Cioronski himself was lying very ill at an hotel in Naples, whither he had repaired immediately after the ball. He had not been there three days when he took the fever, and was for some weeks unable to rise. During this time one of the waiters at the hotel was particularly attentive to him, and when con- valescent the Count felt the necessity of making him some present. But fitful in everything, Cioronski was one of those people who are generous and avaricious by turns. With the prospect of a doctor’s and a nurse’s bill before him, he felt but a small inclination to spend. After some meditation, consequently, he sent for a jeweller. That person came and was introduced into the Count’s room, without being the least aware of the extraordinary interest which he had excited in an unpretending-looking stranger who had been hanging for some days about the neighbourhood of the hotel. A loafer the more at Naples—who dreams of observing him ? The Count showed the jeweller a beautiful sapphire ring, set in filigree gold and pearls. He wished to have the sapphire removed, he said, and mounted asa pin. ‘The jeweller took the commission, and promised the pin for the next day but one; then obsequiously bowed himself out. He was followed to his shop by the stranger, who had a little conversation with him, and inspected the ring. The same evening a telegram conveyed a description of that object to the incredulous King’s Proctor, and worked a change in his opinions. 3 It followed that Count Cioronski was arrested for the murder of his wife, whose missing jewels were found in a secret drawer of his dressing-case. He fell into a condition of the most abject agitation on finding himself discovered, and made an incoherent but tolerably full con- fession of his crime. The circumstances were much as Signor Renzo had imagined them. The husband and wife had a furious quarrel while the servants were upstairs at dinner. Wanda, worked to frenzy by her husband’s taunts, and further enraged by being told that he would no longer take her to Switzerland, declared her intention of leaving him — forthwith, CONnNICOOOKS.E® mn