Page:Tales from Chaucer.djvu/246

 set forward towards her father's house: the people following, weeping, and cursing fortune as they went along: while she maintained her womanly courage, and with dry eyes never once uttered a word. Her father, who heard the tidings of her usage, bitterly lamented the day of his birth. For this poor old man had ever mistrusted their marriage; suspecting, from the first, that when the Lord was weary of his fancy, he would begin to think it a disparagement to his estate to have stooped so low, and would dismiss her upon the first occasion. He went out hastily to meet her, for he knew by the coil of the populace that she was coming, and covered her with her peasant's dress, the tears all the while streaming down his old face.

Thus dwelt for some time with her father this flower of wifely patience; who neither by word or look, before the people, gave notice of the offence she had received, or any token that she remembered her former high estate; and no wonder, for even then she was ever humble. She affected no delicacy or tenderness of person—no pomp—no show of royalty;