he does not love you? Nay, he does
love you; his vows of love still echo in your ears; your heart still
trembles with the fruition of happiness. What matters it if the Earl of
Surrey with his inward eyes sees the woman he folds in his arms to be
another than you? Yet in reality he loves but you alone. Whether you are
for him named Catharine Parr or Jane Douglas, it is all the same if you
only are his love."

"But a day will come when he will discover his mistake, and when he will
curse me."

"That day will never come. The holy Church will find a way to avert
that, if you bow to her will and are obedient to her."

"I do bow to it!" sighed Jane. "I will obey; only promise me, my father,
that no harm shall happen to him; that I shall not be his murderess."

"No, you shall become his savior and deliverer. Only you must fulfil
punctually the work I commit to you. First of all, then, tell me the
result of your meeting to-day. He does not doubt that you are the
queen?"

"No, he believes it so firmly that he would take the sacrament on it.
That is to say, he believes it now because I have promised him to give
him publicly a sign by which he may recognize that it is the queen that
loves him."

"And this sign?" inquired her father, with a look beaming with joy.

"I have promised him that at the great tournament, the queen will give
him a rosette, and that in that rosette be will find a note from the
queen."

"Ah, the idea is an admirable one!" exclaimed Lord Douglas, "and only
a woman who wishes to avenge herself could conceive it. So, then, the
queen will become her own accuser, and herself give into our hands
a proof of her guilt. The only difficulty in the way is to bring the
queen, without arousing her suspicion, to wear this rosette, and to give
it to Surrey."

"She will do it if I beg her to do so, for she loves me; and I shall
so represent it to her that she will do it as an act of kindness to me.
Catharine is good-natured and agreeable, and cannot refuse a request."

"And I will apprise the king of it. That is to say, I shall take good
care not to do this myself, for it is always dangerous to approach a
hungry tiger in his cage and carry him his food, because he might in his
voracity very readily devour our own hand together with the proffered
meat."

"But how?" asked she with an expression of alarm. "Will he content
himself with punishing Catharine alone; will he not also crush him--him
whom he must look