“Shall I love you too?” she said, looking down at him with her sweet, mysterious eyes. “I have had no one to love for so very long.”
The Golden Heart was their guide, for it knew everything—even the way over the trackless seas—and soon the terrible rock was no more than a fast disappearing speck, far astern.
After a happy voyage they reached the country where the Princess’s father still reigned, an old man bowed down by grief.
When they got to the shore and the people saw that it was their own Princess who had returned and heard the tale of her captivity and rescue, their joy knew no bounds and they conducted the Ugly Prince and his crew with great rejoicings to the royal palace, which lay at some distance off. Messengers were sent forward to the poor old King, who, in spite of age and infirmity, mounted his horse for the first time for many years and came out to meet them.
He could hardly believe the news, and, when the meeting was over and he had held his daughter in his arms and knew that it was no dream, but the real, happy truth, he turned to the Prince. “I cannot speak to you now,” he said, “but to-morrow you must tell me the story with your own lips, and, were you to ask me for my kingdom, it should be yours.”
The next morning the Ugly Prince was summoned to the old man’s presence. He told the story of the Princess’s rescue, making very light of his own brave deeds, but the King was not easily deceived; and, as he sent also for the little boy, he soon got at the whole truth.
“And now,” he said, at the end of the tale, “is there anything in the wide world that I can do for you? My kingdom and all I have is yours if you will only take it. Have you no wish—no matter what it may be—that I can gratify?”
“I have loved your daughter since the first moment that I saw her,” said the Ugly Prince.
One evening the Ugly Prince and the Princess were walking on the terrace of the palace garden. The sunset glowed along the western sky, the birds were twittering in the deepening silence, and the heavy scent of masses of roses which climbed over balconies and pillars steeped the air. A minstrel was singing softly inside one of the open windows, and his song reached them as they stood looking out over the balustrade on to the country lying spread before them.