But Gawain persisted, and the king at last, with sorrow of heart, consented that Gawain should be his ransom.  So one day the king and his knights rode to the forest, met the loathly lady, and brought her to the court.  Sir Gawain stood the scoffs and jeers of his companions as he best might, and the marriage was solemnized, but not with the usual festivities.  Chaucer tells us: 

“...  There was no joye ne feste at alle; There n’ as but hevinesse and mochel sorwe, For prively he wed her on the morwe, And all day after hid him as an owle, So wo was him his wife loked so foule!”

[Footnote:  N’AS is not was, contracted; in modern phrase, there was not.  Mochel sorwe is much sorrow; morwe is morrow.]

When night came, and they were alone together, Sir Gawain could not conceal his aversion; and the lady asked him why he sighed so heavily, and turned away his face.  He candidly confessed it was on account of three things, her age, her ugliness, and her low degree.  The lady, not at all offended, replied with excellent arguments to all his objections.  She showed him that with age is discretion, with ugliness security from rivals, and that all true gentility depends, not upon the accident of birth, but upon the character of the individual.

Sir Gawain made no reply; but, turning his eyes on his bride, what was his amazement to perceive that she wore no longer the unseemly aspect that had so distressed him.  She then told him that the form she had worn was not her true form, but a disguise imposed upon her by a wicked enchanter, and that she was condemned to wear it until two things should happen:  one, that she should obtain some young and gallant knight to be her husband.  This having been done, one-half of the charm was removed.  She was now at liberty to wear her true form for half the time, and she bade him choose whether he would have her fair by day, and ugly by night, or the reverse.  Sir Gawain would fain have had her look her best by night, when he alone would see her, and show her repulsive visage, if at all, to others.  But she reminded him how much more pleasant it would be to her to wear her best looks in the throng of knights and ladies by day.  Sir Gawain yielded, and gave up his will to hers.  This alone was wanting to dissolve the charm.  The lovely lady now with joy assured him that she should change no more, but as she now was, so would she remain by night as well as by day.

    “Sweet blushes stayned her rud-red cheek,
      Her eyen were black as sloe,
    The ripening cherrye swelled her lippe,
      And all her neck was snow. 
    Sir Gawain kist that ladye faire
      Lying upon the sheete,
    And swore, as he was a true knight,
      The spice was never so swete.”

The dissolution of the charm which had held the lady also released her brother, the “grim baron,” for he too had been implicated in it.  He ceased to be a churlish oppressor, and became a gallant and generous knight as any at Arthur’s court.