ask after them, lest she should hear that they were slain.

When the duke saw how Griselda had no reproaches, nothing but grief, to
oppose to his will, even his jealousy was forced to confess that her
faith had stood the test. Whenever he looked on her, her gentle
patience moved his heart to pity, and many times he half repented his
cruelty.

Month after month, and year after year went by, and again and again did
this demon of suspicion stir the duke to some trial of his wife's
obedience and patience. He drove out the aged Janiculo from the
comfortable lodgment in the palace in which Griselda had bestowed him,
and forced him to return to the hut where he had lived before his
daughter's greatness. And though Griselda's paling face and sad eye
told her sorrow, she uttered no word of complaint or anger against the
duke.

"Is he not my liege lord?" she said to her own heart, when it sometimes
rose in bitter complainings, "and did I not swear to obey his will in
all things?"

At last the day came when they had been wedded twelve years. Long ago
had Griselda won the hearts of the people by her gentle manners, her
sweet, sad face, her patient ways. If Walter's heart had not been made
of senseless stone, he would now have been content. But in his
scheming brain he had conceived one final test, one trial more, from
which, if Griselda's patience came out unmoved, it would place her as
the pearl of women, high above compare.

On this wedding morn, then, he came into her bower, and in cold speech,