Undine, however, turned toward the door, while her eyes overflowed with the sweetest emotion.

"Where are the poor waiting parents ?" she inquired, and, the old fisherman and his wife advanced hesitatingly from the crowd of spectators.
Their glance rested inquiringly now on Undine, now on the beautiful girl who was said to be their daughter "It is she," said the delighted benefactress, in a faltering tone, and the two old people hung round the neck of their recovered child, weeping and praising God.
But amazed and indignant, Bertalda tore herself from their embrace.
Such a recognition was too much for this proud mind, at a moment when she had surely imagined that her former splendor would even be increased, and when hope was deluding her with a vision of almost royal honors.

It seemed to her as if her rival had devised all this on purpose signally to humble her before Huldbrand and the whole world.

She reviled Undine, she reviled the old people, and bitter invectives, such as "deceiver" and "bribed impostors," fell from her lips.

Then the old fisherman's wife said in a low voice to herself: "Ah me, she is become a wicked girl; and yet I feel in my heart that she is my child." The old fisherman, however, had folded his hands, and was praying silently that this might not be his daughter.