judged her with disfavour, it is true. From the first, something of strangeness and mystery was looked for in her, and the discovery of Bertalda's birth caused no great wonderment; moreover, every one who had heard the story and seen how distempered was Bertalda's behaviour, felt disgust at her alone. Of this, however, the knight and his lady knew nothing as yet. Praise or blame was alike painful to Undine, and there was therefore naught better to be done than leave the old walls of the city behind them with all possible speed.
At early dawn, a well-appointed carriage drove up to the entrance gate for Undine. Huldbrand's horses and those of his attendant squires were pawing the ground in the court. The knight was leading his wife from the door, when a fisher-girl crossed their way.
"We need not thy merchandise," said Huldbrand, "we are just leaving the city." Whereupon, as the fisher-girl began to weep bitterly, the husband and wife recognised that she was Bertalda. They went back with her at once to their apartments and learnt that the duke and duchess, bitterly displeased at her violence and ill-behaviour yesterday, had withdrawn their protection from her, albeit that they had given her a rich dowry. The fisherman, also, had been handsomely rewarded, and with his wife had already set out for their lonely home.
"I would fain have gone with them," she went on, "but the old man who is said to be my father"
