. True, it grieveth me to feel that, when I am dead, she will
abide here a stranger, without aid or counsel; and it were yet more
grievous to me, did I not know thee here, who wilt, I trust, have that
same care of her, for the love of me, which thou wouldst have had of
myself. Wherefore, I entreat thee, as most I may, if it come to pass
that I die, that thou take my goods and her into thy charge and do
with them and her that which thou deemest may be for the solacement of
my soul. And thou, dearest lady, I prithee forget me not after my
death, so I may vaunt me, in the other world, of being beloved here
below of the fairest lady ever nature formed; of which two things an
you will give me entire assurance, I shall depart without misgiving
and comforted.'

The merchant his friend and the lady, hearing these words, wept, and
when he had made an end of his speech, they comforted him and promised
him upon their troth to do that which he asked, if it came to pass
that he died. He tarried not long, but presently departed this life
and was honourably interred of them. A few days after, the merchant
having despatched all his business in Rhodes and purposing to return
to Cyprus on board a Catalan carrack that was there, asked the fair
lady what she had a mind to do, for that it behoved him return to
Cyprus. She answered that, an it pleased him, she would gladly go with
him, hoping for Antiochus his love to be of him entreated and regarded
as a sister. The merchant replied that he was content to do her every
pleasure, and the better to defend her from any affront that might be
offered her, ere they came to Cyprus, he avouched that she was his
wife. Accordingly, they embarked on board the ship and were given a
little cabin on the poop, where, that the fact might not belie his
words, he lay with her in one very small bed. Whereby there came about
that which was not intended of the one or the other of them at
departing Rhodes, to wit, that--darkness and commodity and the heat of
the bed, matters of no small potency, inciting them,--drawn by equal
appetite and forgetting both the friendship and the love of Antiochus
dead, they fell to dallying with each other and before they reached
Baffa, whence the Cypriot came, they had clapped up an alliance
together.

At Baffa she abode some time with the merchant till, as chance would
have it, there came thither, for his occasions, a gentleman by name
Antigonus, great of years and greater yet