“Three.”
“What has become of these suckers?”
“Oh! what has become of them? Well, one has failed; the second has produced the black tulip.”
“And the third?”
“The third!”
“The third-where is it?”
“I have it at home,” said Boxtel, quite confused.
“At home? Where? At Lœvestein, or at Dort?”
“At Dort,” said Boxtel.
“You lie!” cried Rosa. “Monseigneur,” she continued, whilst turning round to the Prince, “I will tell you the true story of those three suckers. The first was crushed by my father in the prisoner’s cell, and this man is quite aware of it, for he himself wanted to get hold of it, and being baulked in his hope, he very nearly fell out with my father, who had been the cause of his disappointment. The second sucker, planted by me, has produced the Black Tulip; and the third and last”—saying this, she drew it from her bosom—“here it is, in the very same paper in which it was wrapped up together with the two others. When about to be led to the scaffold, Cornelius Van Baerle gave me all the three. Take it, Monseigneur, take it.”
And Rosa, unfolding the paper, offered the bulb to the Prince, who took it from her hands and examined it.
“But, Monseigneur, this young woman may have stolen the bulb, as she did the tulip,” Boxtel said, with a faltering voice, and evidently alarmed at the attention with which the Prince examined the bulb; and even more at the movements of Rosa, who was reading some lines written on the paper which remained in her hands.
Her eyes suddenly liglited up; she read, with breathless anxiety, the mysterious paper over and over again; and at last, uttering a cry, held it out to the Prince and said,—
