The Events which took place during those Eight Days

Whether she did not, or would not, understand this look, Rosa answered gravely,-"I have only to speak to you about your tulip, which, as I well know, is the object uppermost in your mind."

Rosa pronounced those few words in a freezing tone, which cut deeply into the heart of Cornelius. He did not suspect what lay hidden under this appearance of indifference with which the poor girl affected to speak of her rival, the black tulip.

"Oh!" muttered Cornelius, "again! again! Have I not told you, Rosa, that I thought but of you? that it was you alone whom I regretted, you whom I missed, you whose absence I felt more than the loss of liberty and of life itself?"

Rosa smiled with a melancholy air.

"Ah!" she said, "your tulip has been in such danger."

Cornelius trembled involuntarily, and showed himself clearly to be caught in the trap, if ever the remark was meant as such.

"Danger!" he cried, quite alarmed; "what danger?"

Rosa looked at him with gentle compassion; she felt that what she wished was beyond the power of this man, and that he must be taken as he was, with his little foible.

"Yes," she said, "you have guessed the truth; that suitor and amorous swain, Jacob, did not come on my account."

"And what did he come for?" Cornelius anxiously asked.

"He came for the sake of the tulip."

"Alas!" said Cornelius, growing even paler at this piece of information than he had been when Rosa, a fortnight before, had told him that Jacob was coming for her sake.