rosette,"
cried he, in a voice of thunder, "before you have exculpated yourself
from the guilt of which you are accused."

Earl Surrey looked him steadily and boldly in the eye. "Have I been
accused, then?" asked he. "Then I demand, first of all, that I be
confronted with my accusers, and that my fault be named!"

"Ha, traitor! Do you dare to brave me?" yelled the king, stamping
furiously with his foot. "Well, now, I will be your accuser and I will
be your judge!"

"And surely, my king and husband, you will be a righteous judge," said
Catharine, as she inclined imploringly toward the king and grasped his
hand. "You will not condemn the noble Earl Surrey without having heard
him; and if you find him guiltless, you will punish his accusers?"

But this intercession of the queen made the king raging. He threw her
hand from him, and gazed at her with looks of such flaming wrath, that
she involuntarily trembled.

"Traitoress yourself!" yelled he, wildly. "Speak not of innocence--you
who are yourself guilty; and before you dare defend the earl, defend
yourself!"

Catharine rose from her seat and looked with flashing eyes into the
king's face blazing with wrath. "King Henry of England," said she,
solemnly, "you have openly, before your whole court, accused your queen
of a crime. I now demand that you name it!"

She was of wondrous beauty in her proud, hold bearing--in her imposing,
majestic tranquillity.

The decisive moment had come, and she was conscious that her life and
her future were struggling with death for the victory.

She looked over to Thomas Seymour, and their eyes met. She saw how he
laid his hand on his sword, and nodded to her a smiling greeting.

"He will defend me; and before he will suffer me to be dragged to the
Tower, he himself will plunge his sword into my breast," thought she,
and a joyous, triumphant assurance filled her whole heart.

She saw nothing but him, who had sworn to die with her when the decisive
moment came. She looked with a smile on the blade which he had
already half drawn from its scabbard; and she hailed it as a dear,
long-yearned-for friend.

She saw not that Henry Howard also had lain his hand on his sword; that
he, too, was ready for her defence, firmly resolved to slay the king
himself, before his mouth uttered the sentence of death over the queen.

But Lady Jane Douglas saw it. She understood how to read the earl's
countenance; she felt that he was ready to go to de