“It was you yourself who gave me the ring, and it was you who placed it on my finger,” said Matilda.
With these words she put aside the veil and dropped the cloak from her shoulders. There she stood before him, blushing, and filling all the room with the light of her beauty.
The count was transported with joy. “You have come!” he cried, “and you have come at the time when I most despaired of finding you. Now we will be married, and never again shall you leave me.”
At these words Matilda grew very sad. “Alas, that may not be,” said she. “Have you forgotten that I am only your kitchen-maid?”
But the count loved her too dearly to care for that. “You will be my wife,” he said, “and then who will dare to remember what you were before?”
“Yes, but there is another reason why we can never, never marry,” sighed Matilda. “You will agree with me as to that when I tell you that my father was your father’s bitterest enemy.”
“Who was your father?” asked the count, wondering.
Matilda then related to him her whole story, who her father was, how her mother had died while she was still a child, and about her stepmother and her nixie godmother. She also told him of how she had chanced to come to his castle and take service there.
The count listened to all she had to say, and when she had come to an end, he took her in his arms and embraced her tenderly.