out
his hearing from or of his niece, instead of inducing him to forget his
fears, on the contrary tended more and more to exasperate them.

The loss of his niece's cheerful society tended also to depress his
spirits; and in order to dispel this despondency, which often crept upon
his mind after his daily employment was over, he was wont frequently
to prevail upon Schalken to accompany him home, and by his presence to
dispel, in some degree, the gloom of his otherwise solitary supper.

One evening, the painter and his pupil were sitting by the fire, having
accomplished a comfortable supper, and had yielded to that silent
pensiveness sometimes induced by the process of digestion, when their
reflections were disturbed by a loud sound at the street-door, as if
occasioned by some person rushing forcibly and repeatedly against it.
A domestic had run without delay to ascertain the cause of the
disturbance, and they heard him twice or thrice interrogate the
applicant for admission, but without producing an answer or any
cessation of the sounds.

They heard him then open the hall-door, and immediately there followed a
light and rapid tread upon the staircase. Schalken laid his hand on his
sword, and advanced towards the door. It opened before he reached it,
and Rose rushed into the room. She looked wild and haggard, and pale
with exhaustion and terror; but her dress surprised them as much even
as 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 eager, terrified impatience:

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

Much alarmed 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, food, at once, or I perish!'

A considerable fragment of a roast joint was upon the table, and
Schalken immediately proceeded to cut some, but he was anticipated; for
no sooner had she become aware of its presence than she darted at it
with the rapacity of a vulture, and, seizing it in her hands she tore
off the flesh with her te