Night came, the husband armed, and noiselessly hid himself in a room on the ground floor:  the lady locked all the doors, being especially careful to secure the mid-stair door, to bar her husband’s ascent; and in due time the gallant, having found his way cautiously enough over the roof, they got them to bed, and there had solace of one another and a good time; and at daybreak the gallant hied him back to his house.  Meanwhile the husband, rueful and supperless, half dead with cold, kept his armed watch beside his door, momently expecting the priest, for the best part of the night; but towards daybreak, his powers failing him, he lay down and slept in the ground-floor room.  ’Twas hard upon tierce when he awoke, and the front door was then open; so, making as if he had just come in, he went upstairs and breakfasted.  Not long afterwards he sent to his wife a young fellow, disguised as the priest’s underling, who asked her if he of whom she wist had been with her again.  The lady, who quite understood what that meant, made answer that he had not come that night, and that, if he continued to neglect her so, ’twas possible he might be forgotten, though she had no mind to forget him.

Now, to make a long story short, the husband passed many a night in the same way, hoping to catch the priest as he came in, the lady and her gallant meanwhile having a good time.  But at last the husband, being able to stand it no longer, sternly demanded of his wife what she had said to the priest the morning when she was confessed.  The lady answered that she was not minded to tell him, for that ’twas not seemly or proper so to do.  Whereupon:—­“Sinful woman,” quoth the husband, “in thy despite I know what thou saidst to him, and know I must and will who this priest is, of whom thou art enamoured, and who by dint of his incantations lies with thee a nights, or I will sluice thy veins for thee.” “’Tis not true,” replied the lady, “that I am enamoured of a priest.”  “How?” quoth the husband, “saidst thou not as much to the priest that confessed thee?” “Thou canst not have had it from him,” rejoined the lady.  “Wast thou then present thyself?  For sure I never told him so.”  “Then tell me,” quoth the husband, “who this priest is; and lose no time about it.”  Whereat the lady began to smile, and:—­“I find it not a little diverting,” quoth she, “that a wise man should suffer himself to be led by a simple woman as a ram is led by the horns to the shambles; albeit no wise man art thou:  not since that fatal hour when thou gavest harbourage in thy breast, thou wist not why, to the evil spirit of jealousy; and the more foolish and insensate thou art, the less glory have I. Deemest thou, my husband, that I am as blind of the bodily eye as thou art of the mind’s eye?  Nay, but for sure I am not so.  I knew at a glance the priest that confessed me, and that ’twas even thyself.  But I was minded to give thee that of which thou wast in quest, and I gave it thee.  Howbeit, if thou hadst