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“Often had she seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration upon the person of her lover, and sometimes she thought these glances were perceived, and even returned.”

Once the princess has determined which lady waits behind one of the doors for her lover, her jealousy threatens to rage unchecked. She hates the woman behind the door. She’s not even sure that she has seen the lady and her lover engaging in flirtatious behavior; she’s aware that she may have imagined it. However, her jealousy is so strong that it overshadows her thought process in this crucial moment of decision-making, in which her lover’s life depends on her ability to think and act rationally.

“Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself, but upon that hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?”

Here the narrator reminds the audience that it is the princess who will decide the lover’s fate. It is in the hands of the princess to deliver the young man to the lady or the tiger. She is ill-tempered, since either outcome means that she has lost her lover, and her tendencies toward rampant jealousy mix with her despair into a potentially deadly cocktail of strong emotion. If she allows jealousy more influence than love, her barbarism will win out and her lover will meet a tragic end.

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