Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/205

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The Black Tulip.
201

of the tulip, that at his dinner hour, that is to say, at twelve o’clock, he was reminded, for the first time, by his appetite, that his daughter was fretting rather too long.

He sent one of the under-turnkeys to call her; and, when the man came back to tell him that he had called and sought her in vain, he resolved to go and call her himself.

He first went to her room, but, loud as he knocked, Rosa answered not.

The locksmith of the fortress was sent for; he opened the door, but Gryphus no more found Rosa than she had found the tulip.

At that very moment she entered Rotterdam.

Gryphus, therefore, had just as little chance of finding her in the kitchen as in her room, and just as little in the garden as in the kitchen.

The reader may imagine the anger of the jailor, when, after having made inquiries about the neighbour hood, he heard that his daughter had hired a horse, and, like an adventuress, set out on a journey, without saying where she was going.

Gryphus again went up in his fury to Van Baerle, abused him, threatened him, knocked all the miserable furniture of his cell about, and promised him all sorts of misery, even starvation and flogging.

Cornelius, without even hearing what his jailor said, allowed himself to be ill-treated, abused, and threatened, remaining all the while sullen, immovable, dead to every emotion and fear.

After having sought for Rosa in every direction, Gryphus looked out for Jacob, and, as he. could not find him either, he began to suspect from that moment that Jacob had run away with her.

The damsel, in the meanwhile, after having stopped for two hours at Rotterdam, had started again on her