Page:Tales of old Lusitania.djvu/111

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THE PORTRAIT OF THE BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS.
97

felt much more grieved at having broken so valuable a vessel. She begged a thousand pardons for her awkwardness, and left the grounds leaning on the old woman's arm, who had just made her appearance. The prince remained very melancholy all that day, and at night when he went to bed he was more peevish and ill-mannered towards the princess than usual. But the princess, showing him her wounded foot, said:—

Oh my poor foot,
Wounded at the fountain
By the broken glass.

The prince, guessing that she alluded to what had passed between him and the beautiful maid, said harshly, "What is it to you what I do? that is my concern, not yours." But she still entreated him to look at her wounded foot; and at last he lit a candle, and to his astonishment and delight saw that the princess was no other than the invalid girl he had seen the day before. Perplexed and mystified, he asked an explanation, and she artfully made up a little story—not telling him that the poor woman had dispelled the enchantment under which she had laboured so many years, and had restored her beauty—but she said that as he would never look at her face from the moment they had come together, he had not found out how he had been misinformed and