“He had a fair companion of his way,
    A goodly Lady clad in scarlet red,
    Purfled with gold and pearl of rich assay,
    And like a Persian mitre on her head
    She wore, with crowns and riches garnished,
    The which her lavish lovers to her gave;
    Her wanton palfrey all was overspread
    With tinsell trappings, woven like a wave,
    Whose bridle rang with golden bells and bosses brave.”

The Red Cross Knight fought and conquered Sansfoy.  Then he rode onward with the dead giant’s companion, the lady Duessa, whom he believed to be good because he was “too simple and too true” to know her wicked.

Meanwhile Una, forsaken and woeful, wandered far and wide seeking her lost Knight.  But nowhere could she hear tidings of him.  At length one day, weary of her quest, she got off her ass and lay down to rest in the thick wood, where “her angel’s face made a sunshine in the shady place.”

Then out of the thickest of the wood a ramping lion rushed suddenly.

    “It fortuned out of the thickest wood
    A ramping Lion rushed suddenly,
    Hunting full greedy after savage blood. 
    Soon as the royal virgin he did spy,
    With gaping mouth at her ran greedily
    To have at once devoured her tender corse.”

But as he came near the sleeping Lady the Lion’s rage suddenly melted.  Instead of killing Una, he licked her weary feet and white hands with fawning tongue.  From being her enemy he became her guardian.  And so for many a day the Lion stayed with Una, guarding her from all harm.  But in her wanderings she at length met with Sansloy, the brother of Sansfoy, who killed the Lion and carried Una off into the darksome wood.

But here in her direst need Una found new friends in a troupe of fauns and satyrs who were playing in the forest.

    “Whom when the raging Saracen espied,
    A rude, misshapen, monstrous rabblement,
    Whose like he never saw, he durst not bide,
    But got his ready steed, and fast away gan ride.”

Then the fauns and satyrs gathered round the Lady, wondering at her beauty, pitying her “fair blubbered face.”

But Una shook with fear.  These terrible shapes, half goat, half human, struck her dumb with horror:  “Ne word to peak, ne joint to move she had.”

    “The savage nation feel her secret smart
    And read her sorrow in her count’nance sad;
    Their frowning foreheads with rough horns yelad,
    And rustic horror all aside do lay,
    And gently grinning shew a semblance glad
    To comfort her, and feat to put away.”

They kneel upon the ground, they kiss her feet, and at last, sure that they mean her no harm, Una rises and goes with them.

Rejoicing, singing songs, honoring her as their Queen, waving branches, scattering flowers beneath her feet, they lead her to their chief Sylvanus.  He, too, receives her kindly, and in the wood she lives with these wild creatures until there she finds a new knight named Satyrane, with whom she once more sets forth to seek the Red Cross Knight.