Rosamond had been asleep.  Now she rubbed her eyes and looked, but it was too dark to see any thing more than that there was a sky over her head.  Slowly the light grew, until she could see the form of the poor woman standing in front of her; and as it went on growing, she began to think she had seen her somewhere before, till all at once she thought of the wise woman, and saw it must be she.  Then she was so ashamed that she bent down her head, and could look at her no longer.  But the poor woman spoke, and the voice was that of the wise woman, and every word went deep into the heart of the princess.

“Rosamond,” she said, “all this time, ever since I carried you from your father’s palace, I have been doing what I could to make you a lovely creature:  ask yourself how far I have succeeded.”

All her past story, since she found herself first under the wise woman’s cloak, arose, and glided past the inner eyes of the princess, and she saw, and in a measure understood, it all.  But she sat with her eyes on the ground, and made no sign.

Then said the wise woman:—­

“Below there is the forest which surrounds my house.  I am going home.  If you pleage to come there to me, I will help you, in a way I could not do now, to be good and lovely.  I will wait you there all day, but if you start at once, you may be there long before noon.  I shall have your breakfast waiting for you.  One thing more:  the beasts have not yet all gone home to their holes; but I give you my word, not one will touch you so long as you keep coming nearer to my house.”

She ceased.  Rosamond sat waiting to hear something more; but nothing came.  She looked up; she was alone.

Alone once more!  Always being left alone, because she would not yield to what was right!  Oh, how safe she had felt under the wise woman’s cloak!  She had indeed been good to her, and she had in return behaved like one of the hyenas of the awful wood!  What a wonderful house it was she lived in!  And again all her own story came up into her brain from her repentant heart.

“Why didn’t she take me with her?” she said.  “I would have gone gladly.”  And she wept.  But her own conscience told her that, in the very middle of her shame and desire to be good, she had returned no answer to the words of the wise woman; she had sat like a tree-stump, and done nothing.  She tried to say there was nothing to be done; but she knew at once that she could have told the wise woman she had been very wicked, and asked her to take her with her.  Now there was nothing to be done.

“Nothing to be done!” said her conscience.  “Cannot you rise, and walk down the hill, and through the wood?”

“But the wild beasts!”

“There it is!  You don’t believe the wise woman yet!  Did she not tell you the beasts would not touch you?”

“But they are so horrid!”

“Yes, they are; but it would be far better to be eaten up alive by them than live on—­such a worthless creature as you are.  Why, you’re not fit to be thought about by any but bad ugly creatures.”