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80 much question in their looks–first at Undine and then on the beautiful maiden said to be their daughter.

"Ay, 'tis she," murmured Undine, "'tis she, indeed!" And the two old people flung their arms round the neck of their long-lost child, weeping sore and praising God.

But little pleasure, I wis, did Bertalda gain therefrom. Angry and astonished, she tore herself from their embrace. A discovery such as this was more than her proud spirit could bear at a moment when she had fondly dreamed that still greater fortune was to be her lot–nay that she might come even to royal honours. Her rival, it seemed to her, had devised this plan so that she might be all the more signally humiliated before Huldbrand and the whole world. Undine she covered with reproaches; the old people she reviled; and bitter, hateful words, such as "liar," "deceiver," "bribed impostors," fell from her lips. Thereupon the old fisherman's wife said to herself in a low voice: "Ah me, she is become, I ween, a wicked girl, and yet I feel in my heart that she was born of me." As for the fisherman, he folded his hands and prayed silently that it might not be his daughter. Undine, pale as death, turned from the parents to Bertalda and from Bertalda to the parents. From the heaven of happiness of which she had dreamed she was of a sudden cast out, and such anguish and terror as she had never known even in dreams overwhelmed her thoughts.

"Hast thou a soul?" cried she, "hast thou indeed