is embraces, his vows of love, in order to render a
service to her king--that woman was my daughter, Lady Jane Douglas!"

"Lady Jane!" cried the king. "No, no, this is a new deception. That
haughty, chaste, and unapproachable Lady Jane--that wonderfully
beautiful marble statue really has then a heart in her breast, and that
heart belongs to me? Lady Jane, the pure and chaste virgin, has made
for me this prodigious sacrifice, of receiving this hated Surrey as her
lover, in order, like a second Delilah, to deliver him into my hand? No,
Douglas, you are lying to me. Lady Jane has not done that!"

"May it please your majesty to go yourself and take a look at that
fainting woman, who was to Henry Howard the queen."

The king did not reply to him; but he drew back the curtain and
reentered the cabinet, in which the queen was waiting with John Heywood.

Henry did not notice them. With youthful precipitation he crossed the
cabinet and the hall. Now he stood by the figure of Geraldine still
lying on the floor.

She was no longer in a swoon. She had long since regained her
consciousness; and terrible were the agonies and tortures that rent her
heart. Henry Howard had incurred the penalty of the headsman's axe, and
it was she that had betrayed him.

But her father had sworn to her that she should save her lover.

She durst not die then. She must live to deliver Henry Howard.

There were burning, as it were, the fires of hell in her poor heart;
but she was not at liberty to heed these pains. She could not think of
herself--only of him--of Henry Howard, whom she must deliver, whom she
must save from an ignominious death.

For him she sent up her fervent prayers to God; for him her heart
trembled with anxiety and agony, as the king now advanced to her, and,
bending down, gazed into her eyes with a strange expression, at once
scrutinizing and smiling.

"Lady Jane," said he then, as he presented her his hand, "arise from the
ground and allow your king to express to you his thanks for your sublime
and wonderful sacrifice! Verily, it is a fair lot to be a king; for then
one has at least the power of punishing traitors, and of rewarding those
that serve us. I have to-day done the one, and I will not neglect to do
the other also. Stand up, then, Lady Jane; it does not become you to lie
on your knees before me."

"Oh, let me kneel, my king," said she, passionately; "let me beseech
you for mercy, for pity! Have compassion, King H