same moment, however, she perceived the knight also, and continued
standing before the young man in fixed astonishment. Huldbrand was
charmed with her graceful figure, and viewed her lovely features with
the more intense interest, as he imagined it was only her surprise that
allowed him the opportunity, and that she would soon turn away from his
gaze with increased bashfulness. But the event was the very reverse of
what he expected; for, after looking at him for a long while, she became
more confident, moved nearer, knelt down before him, and while she
played with a gold medal which he wore attached to a rich chain on his
breast, exclaimed,

"Why, you beautiful, you kind guest! how have you reached our poor
cottage at last? Have you been obliged for years and years to wander
about the world before you could catch one glimpse of our nook? Do you
come out of that wild forest, my beautiful knight?"

The old woman was so prompt in her reproof as to allow him no time to
answer. She commanded the maiden to rise, show better manners, and go to
her work. But Undine, without making any reply, drew a little footstool
near Huldbrand's chair, sat down upon it with her netting, and said in a
gentle tone--

"I will work here."

The old man did as parents are apt to do with children to whom they have
been over-indulgent. He affected to observe nothing of Undine's strange
behaviour, and was beginning to talk about something else. But this the
maiden did not permit him to do. She broke in upon him, "I have asked
our kind guest from whence he has come among us, and he has not yet
answered me."

"I come out of the forest, you lovely little vision," Huldbrand
returned; and she spoke again:

"You must also tell me how you came to enter that forest, so feared and
shunned, and the marvellous adventures you met with in it; for there is
no escaping without something of this kind."

Huldbrand felt a slight shudder on remembering what he had witnessed,
and looked involuntarily toward the window, for it seemed to him that
one of the strange shapes which had come upon him in the forest must be
there grinning in through the glass; but he discerned nothing except the
deep darkness of night, which had now enveloped the whole prospect. Upon
this he became more collected, and was just on the point of beginning
his account, when the old man thus interrupted him:

"Not so, sir knight; this is by no means a fit hour for such relations."

But Und