"I'm going to kill you," roared the Beast still more loudly. "It's taken years to cultivate this sort of rose, and—and I'm going to kill you. Unless," he added after a pause, "you send me one of your daughters here instead."
"All right," said the merchant and got on his feet again.
"She must be here to-morrow by breakfast time, and I breakfast
early," said the Beast, as he let the merchant out of the gate. "If she is not here, I shall come for you, and don't you forget it."
It was by no means likely that he would forget it, in fact he could think of nothing else. He hurried home and told his dreadful news, and received a dreadful scolding from his two elder daughters, who were angry at not getting their presents.
"And it is Beauty's fault that you have got into this trouble," they said. "Beauty and her stupid rose. Beauty had better get you out of the trouble." Beauty said little, but smiled on, with sunshine in her heart, and trust in her loving nature, and cooked the dinner.
"WHEN SHE CAME TO THE GATE IN THE WALL
SHE KNOCKED UPON IT THREE TIMES"
Early next morning when the dawn was breaking she left her father's house, leaving a little note behind her begging him not to be anxious but that she had gone to the Beast's castle.
When she came to the gate in the wall she knocked upon it three times and it opened as if by magic, for she could see no one. And she stepped into the garden of red roses, and in the distance across the Park she saw the Castle, and she thought she had never seen anything so beautiful. For it was built of mother-of-pearl, and the red and yellow gleams of the rising sun shone upon its glistening walls, and lit them up with a thousand radiant lights.