One day, walking in the forest, the Princess met once again the wood-reeve’s son, but he was grown a man, and as soon as the Princess saw him she loved him. She ran and brought her mirror. “Are you afraid to look in it?” she said. “It is the Mirror of Truth.”
“Why should I be afraid?” he asked. And he looked in the mirror, and the Princess, leaning over his shoulder, looked too.
He started back with a cry. “I am not like that,” he said. For the mirror had shown him a face like his own but a thousand times more beautiful, for it revealed now the full glory of his noble nature. And as the Princess looked in the mirror she read his inmost heart.
“Why, you love me,” she said softly.
“I have loved you ever since I first saw you,” he said.
And when the King and Queen saw his face reflected in the mirror they said: “Take our daughter, for you alone are worthy of her.”
So they were married, and the wood-reeve’s son is King of all the land.
E. Nesbit.