‘This Lord one evening a little before sunset returned from his day’s hunting, and he was merry because he had slain much. As he rode slowly homeward (his attendants being occupied with the quarry) he spied in the great wood and not many paces from the Castle Drawbridge a strange lady. She rode upon a grey palfrey and was clad in a bright green cloak embroidered all with pearls. She was very comely. She seemed to that wicked Lord to be more fair than summer or the sweet sunlight, and he gazed on her like one smitten with sudden wonder. But he was no man to be abashed before womenfolk, so he presently saluted her and rode towards her. To him she made answer with so melodious and delicate voice (as the deceitful Sirens used towards Sir Ulysses), and with so jolly demeanour and sweet accord, that his heart was ravished within him, and he was filled with sudden desire of her. Therefore coming up close to her palfrey, without more ado he flung his arm round her waist and kissed her on the lips, she making but faint and seemingly wanton resistance. So toying with her, he led her into the castle and kept her with him that night and thereafter. ‘The Lord’s wife was a lady right devout and pious, much given to orisons and fasting and penance. Mightily had she striven to turn her husband from his evil way of life, and she had also gotten many religious men and women, far and near, to pray for his amendment, and in especial had had supplication made at the shrines of the Saints most powerful in such cases throughout the land. But so entirely was her Lord given over to the Devil that all was in vain, and the more she talked to him of repentance and the torments of the damned, the more he hardened his heart and the more fierce and hot his anger boiled against her. “Go to thy prayers, thou jade,” he would cry, “thou wert fit for a green-faced nun or a puling anchoress.” Then he would revile her grievously, saying the sight of her chapfallen face set his teeth on edge like a sour apple and was like to turn the victual on his stomach, and would blasphemously offer golden candlesticks to all the parish churches in England, would she but hang herself from the battlements or cast herself headlong into the moat. Whereupon, weeping, she would betake herself to her bower and read solitarily (but none the less in the care of Holy Angels) from her Book of Hours. ‘With the coming of the strange woman to the Castle, the Lord’s rage against his Lady was grievously increased, so that he gave over all the governance of his household to his new mistress, and forbade his true wife to look upon his face any more, lest he did her some violent injury. ‘Lo, good men all, how one sin leadeth to another, for pride, having begotten lust, now lust begot murder.