Page:Tales from Chaucer.djvu/244

 you all I could give, and came a spotless maiden, and am your true wife, heaven forbid that the wife of such a Lord should be united to another husband. As regards your new bride, I pray for your happiness and prosperity: I freely yield her that place where I was wont to be so blessed: for since it is your pleasure, my Lord (who wert formerly the home in which my heart had nestled), that I should depart, I am ready to go when you command. But when you offer to restore such dowry as I first brought, too well do I bear in mind that it was my wretched clothes—Oh! good God! how gentle and kind you seemed by your speech and your countenance on the day of our marriage! True it is, and I find it so, for in myself I have proved the effect, that love when old is not the same as love when it is young. Yet, be sure, my Lord, that for no adversity, even were it to die upon this occasion, shall it ever be, that either in word or deed, I repent of having given you my whole heart, freely, and without reserve.

'My Lord, you know that in my father's hut you stripped me of my lowly weeds, and