towards the
door. It opened before he reached it, and Rose rushed into the room. She
looked wild, fierce and haggard with terror and exhaustion, but her
dress surprised them as much as even her unexpected appearance. It
consisted of a kind of white woollen wrapper, made close about the neck,
and descending to the very ground. It was much deranged and
travel-soiled. The poor creature had hardly entered the chamber when she
fell senseless on the floor. With some difficulty they succeeded in
reviving her, and on recovering her senses, she instantly exclaimed, in
a tone of terror rather than mere impatience:----

"Wine! wine! quickly, or I'm lost!"

Astonished and almost scared at the strange agitation in which the call
was made, they at once administered to her wishes, and she drank some
wine with a haste and eagerness which surprised them. She had hardly
swallowed it, when she exclaimed, with the same urgency:

"Food, for God's sake, food, at once, or I perish."

A considerable fragment of a roast joint was upon the table, and
Schalken immediately began to cut some, but he was anticipated, for no
sooner did she see it than she caught it, a more than mortal image of
famine, and with her hands, and even with her teeth, she tore off the
flesh, and swallowed it. When the paroxysm of hunger had been a little
appeased, she appeared on a sudden overcome with shame, or it may have
been that other more agitating thoughts overpowered and scared her, for
she began to weep bitterly and to wring her hands.

"Oh, send for a minister of God," said she; "I am not safe till he
comes; send for him speedily."

Gerard Douw despatched a messenger instantly, and prevailed on his niece
to allow him to surrender his bed chamber to her use. He also persuaded
her to retire to it at once to rest; her consent was extorted upon the
condition that they would not leave her for a moment.

"Oh that the holy man were here," she said; "he can deliver me: the dead
and the living can never be one: God has forbidden it."

With these mysterious words she surrendered herself to their guidance,
and they proceeded to the chamber which Gerard Douw had assigned to her
use.

"Do not, do not leave me for a moment," said she; "I am lost for ever if
you do."

Gerard Douw's chamber was approached through a spacious apartment, which
they were now about to enter. He and Schalken each carried a candle, so
that a sufficiency of light was cast upon all surroundin