not keep the little ring to remember her by?

So he had taken it, and that same day he had gone all the way to his
lonely vineyard on Monte Mario carrying the chocolate box in his
hands, and he had buried it under the chestnut-tree at the upper end,
where there was some grass; and the breeze always blew there on summer
afternoons. Then he had sat on the roots of the tree for a while,
looking towards Rome.

He would have plenty of time to go to the vineyard now, for in a
little while he should have nothing to do, as the palace was going to
be sold. When he got home, he wrote a formal letter to Donna Sabina,
informing her that he had fulfilled the commands she had deigned to
give him, and ventured to subscribe himself her Excellency's most
devoted, humble and grateful servant, as indeed he was, from the
bottom of his heart. In twenty-four hours he received a note from her,
written in a delicate tall hand, not without character, on paper
bearing the address of Baron Volterra's house in Via Ludovisi. She
thanked him in few words, warmly and simply. He read the note several
times and then put it away in an old-fashioned brass-bound secretary,
of which he always kept the key in his pocket. It was the only word of
thanks he had received from any living member of the Conti family.

A month had passed since then, but as he sat at his desk it was all as
vivid as if it had happened yesterday.

He was in his office to-day because he had received notice that some
one was coming to look at the palace with a view to buying it, and he
considered it his duty to show it to possible purchasers. Baron
Volterra had sent him word in the morning, and he had come early.