Thorgerd answered: “Surely this is true, brother, wherein thou sayest that she has the fairness and countenance of us Mere-folk, but the goodliness of Olaf Peacock she has not got, for she is not his daughter.”
“How can that be,” says Thorstein, “being thy daughter none the less?”
She answered: “To say sooth, kinsman,” quoth she, “this fair maiden is not my daughter, but thine.”
And therewith she told him all as it had befallen, and prayed him to forgive her and his own wife that trespass.
Thorstein said: “I cannot blame you two for having done this; most things will fall as they are fated, and well have ye covered over my folly: so look I on this maiden that I deem it great good luck to have so fair a child. But now, what is her name?”
“Helga she is called,” says Thorgerd.
“Helga the Fair,” says Thorstein. “But now shalt thou make her ready to come home with me.”
She did so, and Thorstein was led out with good gifts, and Helga rode with him to his home, and was brought up there with much honour and great love from father and mother and all her kin.