also; that is to say, he had
retired to his cabinet, and was busy filing away at the sonnets which
he expected to recite to-day, and in which he lauded the beauty and the
grace of the fair Geraldine.

He had the paper in his hand, and was lying on the velvet ottoman which
stood before his writing-table.

Had Lady Jane Douglas seen him now, she would have been filled with
painful rapture to observe how, with head leaned back on the cushion,
his large blue eyes raised dreamily to heaven, he smiled and whispered
gentle words.

He was wholly absorbed in sweet reminiscences; he was thinking of those
rapturous, blessed hours which he a few days before had spent with his
Geraldine; and as he thought of them he adored her, and repeated to her
anew in his mind his oath of eternal love and inviolable truth.

His enthusiastic spirit was completely filled with a sweet melancholy;
and he felt perfectly intoxicated by the magical happiness afforded him
by his Geraldine.

She was his--his at last! After struggles so long and painful, after
such bitter renunciation, and such mournful resignation, happiness had
at last arisen for him; the never expected had at last become indeed a
reality. Catharine loved him. With a sacred oath she had sworn to him
that she would one day become his wife; that she would become his wife
before God and man.

But when is the day to come on which he may show her to the world as
his consort? When will she be at length relieved from the burden of her
royal crown? When at length will fall from her those golden chains that
bind her to a tyrannical and bloodthirsty husband--to the cruel and
arrogant king? When will Catharine at length cease to be queen, in order
to become Lady Surrey?

Strange! As he asked himself this, there ran over him a shudder, and an
unaccountable dread fell upon his soul.

It seemed to him as if a voice whispered to him: "Thou wilt never live
to see that day! The king, old as he is, will nevertheless live longer
than thou! Prepare thyself to die, for death is already at thy door!"

And it was not the first time that he had heard that voice. Often before
it had spoken to him, and always with the same words, the same warning.
Often it seemed to him in his dreams as if he felt a cutting pain
about the neck; and he had seen a scaffold, from which his own head was
rolling down.

Henry Howard was superstitious; for he was a poet, and to poets it is
given to perceive the mysterious