These conjectures did they cast in their heads, but specially Ganymede, who, having love in her heart, proved restless, and half without patience, that Rosader wronged her with so long absence; for Love measures every minute, and thinks hours to be days, and days to be months, till they feed their eyes with the sight of their desired object.  Thus perplexed lived poor Ganymede, while on a day, sitting with Aliena in a great dump,[1] she cast up her eye, and saw where Rosader came pacing towards them with his forest bill on his neck.  At that sight her color changed, and she said to Aliena: 

“See, mistress, where our jolly forester comes.”

[Footnote 1:  despondency.]

“And you are not a little glad thereof,” quoth Aliena, “your nose bewrays what porridge you love:  the wind cannot be tied within his quarter, the sun shadowed with a veil, oil hidden in water, nor love kept out of a woman’s looks:  but no more of that, Lupus est in fabula.”

As soon as Rosader was come within the reach of her tongue’s end, Aliena began thus: 

“Why, how now, gentle forester, what wind hath kept you from hence? that being so newly married, you have no more care of your Rosalynde, but to absent yourself so many days?  Are these the passions you painted out so in your sonnets and roundelays?  I see well hot love is soon cold, and that the fancy of men is like to a loose feather that wandereth in the air with the blast of every wind.”

“You are deceived, mistress,” quoth Rosader; “’twas a copy[1] of unkindness that kept me hence, in that, I being married, you carried away the bride; but if I have given any occasion of offence by absenting myself these three days, I humbly sue for pardon, which you must grant of course, in that the fault is so friendly confessed with penance.  But to tell you the truth, fair mistress and my good Rosalynde, my eldest brother by the injury of Torismond is banished from Bordeaux, and by chance he and I met in the forest.”

[Footnote 1:  quantity.]

And here Rosader discoursed unto them what had happened betwixt them, which reconcilement made them glad, especially Ganymede.  But Aliena, hearing of the tyranny of her father, grieved inwardly, and yet smothered all things with such secrecy, that the concealing was more sorrow than the conceit; yet that her estate might be hid still, she made fair weather of it, and so let all pass.

Fortune, that saw how these parties valued not her deity, but held her power in scorn, thought to have a bout with them, and brought the matter to pass thus.  Certain rascals that lived by prowling in the forest, who for fear of the provost marshal had caves in the groves and thickets to shroud themselves from his trains, hearing of the beauty of this fair shepherdess, Aliena, thought to steal her away, and to give her to the king for a present; hoping, because the king was a great lecher, by such a gift to purchase all