Helena was no sooner married, than she was desired by Bertram to apply to the king for him for leave of absence from court; and when she brought him the king’s permission for his departure, Bertram told her that as he was not prepared for this sudden marriage, it had much unsettled him, and therefore she must not wonder at the course he should pursue.  If Helena wondered not, she grieved, when she found it was his intention to leave her.  He ordered her to go home to his mother.  When Helena heard this unkind command, she replied, “Sir, I can nothing say to this, but that I am your most obedient servant, and shall ever with true observance seek to eke out that desert, wherein my homely stars have failed to equal my great fortunes.”  But this humble speech of Helena’s did not at all move the haughty Bertram to pity his gentle wife, and he parted from her without even the common civility of a kind farewel.

Back to the countess then Helena returned.  She had accomplished the purport of her journey, she had preserved the life of the king, and she had wedded her heart’s dear lord, the count Rossilion; but she returned back a dejected lady to her noble mother-in-law, and as soon as she entered the house, she received a letter from Bertram which almost broke her heart.

The good countess received her with a cordial welcome, as if she had been her son’s own choice, and a lady of a high degree, and she spoke kind words, to comfort her for the unkind neglect of Bertram in sending his wife home on her bridal day alone.  But this gracious reception failed to cheer the sad mind of Helena, and she said, “Madam, my lord is gone, for ever gone.”  She then read these words out of Bertram’s letter:  When you can get the ring from my finger which never shall come off, then call me husband, but in such a Then I write a Never.  “This is a dreadful sentence!” said Helena.  The countess begged her to have patience, and said, now Bertram was gone, she should be her child, and that she deserved a lord, that twenty such rude boys as Bertram might tend upon, and hourly call her mistress.  But in vain by respectful condescension and kind flattery this matchless mother tried to soothe the sorrows of her daughter-in-law.  Helena still kept her eyes fixt upon the letter, and cried out in an agony of grief, Till I have no wife, I have nothing in France.  The countess asked her if she found those words in the letter?  “Yes, madam,” was all poor Helena could answer.

The next morning Helena was missing.  She left a letter to be delivered to the countess after she was gone, to acquaint her with the reason of her sudden absence:  in this letter she informed her, that she was so much grieved at having driven Bertram from his native country and his home, that to atone for her offence she had undertaken a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Jaques le Grand, and concluded with requesting the countess to inform her son that the wife he so hated had left his house for ever.