ring you caused? I would rather my pretty baby were
dead than that she lived to endure what I have of late endured."

"Life and death are not mine to bestow or to withhold," said the
Northern spirit calmly, as she drew her white garments more closely
round her with a majestic air. "So your rash words, foolish woman,
fortunately for you all, cannot touch the child. But something--much--I
can do, and I will. She shall not know the suffering you dread for her
with so cowardly a fear. She shall be what you choose to fancy _I_ am.
And instead of the name you have given her, she shall be known for what
she is--Princess Ice-Heart."

She turned to go, but the King on one hand, her three sisters on the
other, started forward to detain her.

"Have pity!" exclaimed the former.

"Sister, bethink you," said the latter; the Western fairy adding
beseechingly, the tears springing in her blue eyes, which so quickly
changed from bright to sad, "Say something to soften this hard fate.
Undo it you cannot, I know. Or, at least, allow me to mitigate it if I
can."

The Snow fairy stopped; in truth, she was far from hard-hearted or
remorseless, and already she was beginning to feel half sorry for what
she had done.

"What would you propose?" she said coldly.

The fairy of the West threw back her auburn hair with a gesture of
impatience.

"I would I knew!" she said. "'Tis a hard knot you have tied, my sister.
For that which would mend the evil wrought seems to me impossible while
the evil exists--the cure and the cessation of the disease are one. How
could the heart of ice be melted till tender feelings warm it, and how
can tender feelings find entrance into a feelingless heart? Alas! alas!
I can but predict what sounds like a mockery of your trouble," she went
on, turning to the King, though indeed by this time she might have
included the Queen in her sympathy, for Claribel stood, horrified at the
result of her mad resentment, as pale as Brave-Heart himself. "Hearken!"
and her expressive face, over which sunshine and showers were wont to
chase each other as on an April day--for such, as all know, is the
nature of the changeful, lovable spirit of the West--for once grew still
and statue-like, while her blue eyes pierced far into the distance. "The
day on which the Princess of the Icy Heart shall shed a tear, that heart
shall melt--but then only."

The Northern fairy murmured something under her breath, but what the
words were no one