Page:The black tulip (IA 10892334.2209.emory.edu).pdf/210

 —go, my child, go, remember, Master Isaac Boxtel at the White Swan Inn.”

And Mynheer Van Herysen, taking up his fine pen, resumed his report, which had been interrupted by Rosa’s visit.

  , beyond herself, and nearly mad with joy and fear, at the idea of the black talip being found again, started for the White Swan, followed by the boatman, a stout lad from Frisia, who was strong enough to knock down a dozen Boxtels single-handed.

He had been made acquainted in the course of the journey with the state of affairs, and was not afraid of any encounter; only he had orders, in such a case, to spare the tulip.

But on arriving in the great market-place, Rosa at once stopped; a sudden thought had struck her, just as Homer’s Minerva seizes Achilles by the hair at the moment when he is about to be carried away by his anger.

“Good Heavens!” she muttered to herself, “I have made a grievous blunder; may be, I have ruined Cornelius, the tulips and myself. I have given the alarm, and perhaps awakened suspicion. I am but a woman; these men may league themselves against me, and then I shall be lost. If I am lost, that matters nothing,—but Cornelius and the tulip!”

She reflected for a moment.

“If I go to that Boxtel and do not know him; if that Boxtel is not my Jacob, but another fancier, who has also discovered the black tulip; or if my tulip has