Saying this he looked anxiously at Rosa, eagerly waiting for her answer.
"Young? handsome?" cried Rosa, bursting into a laugh. "He is hideous to look at; crooked, nearly fifty years of age, and never dares to look me in the face, or to speak, except in an undertone."
"And his name?"
"Jacob Gisels."
"I don't know him."
"Then you see that, at all events, he does not come after you."
"At any rate, if he loves you, Rosa, which is very likely, as to see you is to love you, at least you don't love him."
"To be sure I don't."
"Then you wish me to keep my mind easy?"
"I should certainly ask you to do so."
"Well, then, now as you begin to know how to read you will read all that I write to you of the pangs of jealousy and of absence, won't you, Rosa?"
"I shall read it, if you write with good big letters."
Then, as the turn which the conversation took began to make Rosa uneasy, she asked,-"By the bye, how is your tulip going on?"
"Oh, Rosa, only imagine my joy, this morning I looked at it in the sun, and after having moved the soil aside which covers the bulb, I saw the first sprouting of the leaves. This small germ has caused me a much greater emotion than the order of his Highness which turned aside the sword already raised at the Buytenhof."
"You hope, then?" said Rosa, smiling.
"Yes, yes, I hope."
"And I, in my turn, when shall I plant my bulb?"
"Oh, the first favourable day I will tell you; but, whatever you do, let nobody help you, and don't confide your secret to any one in the world; do you see, a connoisseur by merely looking at the bulb would be able to distinguish its value; and so, my dearest Rosa, be careful in locking up the third sucker which remains to you."
"It is still wrapped up in the same paper in which you put it, and just as you gave it me. I have laid it at the bottom of my chest under my point lace, which keeps it dry, without pressing upon it. But good night, my poor captive gentleman."
"How? already?"
"It must be, it must be."
"Coming so late and going so soon."
"My father might grow impatient not seeing me return, and that precious lover might suspect a rival."
Here she listened uneasily.
"What is it?" asked Van Baerle. "I thought I heard something."
"What, then?"
"Something like a step, creaking on the staircase."
"Surely," said the prisoner, "that cannot be Master Gryphus, he is always heard at a distance."