He went home as usual in the evening, but Agnes had not come in.  They were accustomed to such an absence now and then, and were not at first frightened; but when it grew dark and she did not appear, the husband set out with his dogs in one direction, and the wife in another, to seek their child.  Morning came and they had not found her.  Then the whole country-side arose to search for the missing Agnes; but day after day and night after night passed, and nothing was discovered of or concerning her, until at length all gave up the search in despair except the mother, although she was nearly convinced now that the poor woman had carried her off.

One day she had wandered some distance from her cottage, thinking she might come upon the remains of her daughter at the foot of some cliff, when she came suddenly, instead, upon a disconsolate-looking creature sitting on a stone by the side of a stream.

Her hair hung in tangles from her head; her clothes were tattered, and through the rents her skin showed in many places; her cheeks were white, and worn thin with hunger; the hollows were dark under her eyes, and they stood out scared and wild.  When she caught sight of the shepherdess, she jumped to her feet, and would have run away, but fell down in a faint.

At first sight the mother had taken her for her own child, but now she saw, with a pang of disappointment, that she had mistaken.  Full of compassion, nevertheless, she said to herself: 

“If she is not my Agnes, she is as much in need of help as if she were.  If I cannot be good to my own, I will be as good as I can to some other woman’s; and though I should scorn to be consoled for the loss of one by the presence of another, I yet may find some gladness in rescuing one child from the death which has taken the other.”

Perhaps her words were not just like these, but her thoughts were.  She took up the child, and carried her home.  And this is how Rosamond came to occupy the place of the little girl whom she had envied in the picture.

VII.

Notwithstanding the differences between the two girls, which were, indeed, so many that most people would have said they were not in the least alike, they were the same in this, that each cared more for her own fancies and desires than for any thing else in the world.  But I will tell you another difference:  the princess was like several children in one—­such was the variety of her moods; and in one mood she had no recollection or care about any thing whatever belonging to a previous mood—­not even if it had left her but a moment before, and had been so violent as to make her ready to put her hand in the fire to get what she wanted.  Plainly she was the mere puppet of her moods, and more than that, any cunning nurse who knew her well enough could call or send away those moods almost as she pleased, like a showman pulling strings behind a show.  Agnes,