utside, the new kind
of tears she had shed, the love she had begun to feel for her parents,
and the trust she had begun to place in the wise woman, it seemed to
her as if her soul had grown larger of a sudden, and she had left the
days of her childishness and naughtiness far behind her. People are so
ready to think themselves changed when it is only their mood that is
changed! Those who are good-tempered because it is a fine day, will be
ill-tempered when it rains: their selves are just the same both days;
only in the one case, the fine weather has got into them, in the other
the rainy. Rosamond, as she sat warming herself by the glow of the
peat-fire, turning over in her mind all that had passed, and feeling
how pleasant the change in her feelings was, began by degrees to think
how very good she had grown, and how very good she was to have grown
good, and how extremely good she must always have been that she was
able to grow so very good as she now felt she had grown; and she became
so absorbed in her self-admiration as never to notice either that the
fire was dying, or that a heap of fir-cones lay in a corner near it.
Suddenly, a great wind came roaring down the chimney, and scattered the
ashes about the floor; a tremendous rain followed, and fell hissing on
the embers; the moon was swallowed up, and there was darkness all about
her. Then a flash of lightning, followed by a peal of thunder, so
terrified the princess, that she cried aloud for the old woman, but
there came no answer to her cry.

Then in her terror the princess grew angry, and saying to herself, "She
must be somewhere in the place, else who was there to open the door to
me?" began to shout and yell, and call the wise woman all the bad names
she had been in the habit of throwing at her nurses. But there came not
a single sound in reply.

Strange to say, the princess never thought of telling herself now how
naughty she was, though that would surely have been reasonable. On the
contrary, she thought she had a perfect right to be angry, for was she
not most desperately ill used--and a princess too? But the wind howled
on, and the rain kept pouring down the chimney, and every now and then
the lightning burst out, and the thunder rushed after it, as if the
great lumbering sound could ever think to catch up with the swift light!

At length the princess had again grown so angry, frightened, and
miserable, all together, that she jumped up and hurried about the