"Aye!" answered Jacqueline in fear and trembling, "Thou hast guessed aright, but tell no one, I pray thee!"
"I knew it! I felt it!" continued the doctor. "And yet I could not make the memory a connected one, till now. I was a student about to graduate from the University, and thy father was my great admiration and example. I saw Vrouw Voorhaas once on visiting his home, but never his children, hence I did not recognize thee. It was sad--sad, thy father's end, and I grieved over it many a long day! It was his great devotion to the young Count de Buren who was under his special care, that brought him to his death. Dost thou know all about it?"
"I know only what Vrouw Voorhaas has told me, of his being captured and killed by the cruel Duke of Alva," answered Jacqueline.
"Then I can tell thee more, and I will some time. Right glad I am that it has fallen to my lot to help and befriend thee, for so I can render service to thy dead father who was always more than kind to me."
All the morning Jacqueline sat by the sick woman's bedside, moistening her parched lips with water, cooling her feverish brow with refreshing compresses, and tending to every unspoken want with a devotion born of love and remorse. At no time did Vrouw Voorhaas become sane and conscious of her surroundings, and her feverish delirium increased as the day wore on. It wrung the girl's tender heart to hear her cry out against the pangs of hunger and imagine that she must continually deny herself for the children's sake.
Little by little the history of all the past weeks of suffering was revealed to the watching girl, and she realized that what she had supposed to be a sufficient supply of provisions for all, had only been rendered enough for herself and Gysbert by the cruel deprivation of this faithful woman. But other chance ejaculations were more mystifying, and served to arouse in Jacqueline an intense, terrified curiosity as to what might be this long kept secret that so troubled the soul of Vrouw Voorhaas. Once she was electrified by hearing the sick woman hiss:
"How didst thou get in the city, Dirk Willumhoog?--No, go away! Thou canst draw nothing from me!--I will not tell thee, I say!--Thou dare not touch one hair of their heads!--Nay, I _will_ not tell thee!--Keep thy gold!--What do I care for all the wealth of the Indies?--Their father--"