the room
with slow and heavy steps.

Earl Douglas watched them with a sullen, hateful expression. As the door
closed after them he raised his arm threateningly toward heaven, and his
trembling lips uttered a fierce curse and execration.

"Vanquished! vanquished again!" muttered he, gnashing his teeth.
"Humbled by this woman whom I hate, and whom I will yet destroy! Yes,
she has conquered this time; but we will commence the struggle anew, and
our envenomed weapon shall nevertheless strike her at last!"

Suddenly he felt a hand laid heavily on his shoulder, and a pair of
glaring, flaming eyes gazed at him.

"Father," said Lady Jane, as she threw her right hand threateningly
toward heaven--"father, as true as there is a God above us, I will
accuse you yourself to the king as a traitor--I will betray to him all
your accursed plots--if you do not help me to deliver Henry Howard!"

Her father looked with an expression almost melancholy in her face,
painfully convulsed and pale as marble. "I will help you!" said he. "I
will do it, if you will help me also, and further my plans."

"Oh, only save Henry Howard, and I will sign myself away to the devil
with my heart's blood!" said Jane Douglas, with a horrible smile.
"Save his life, or, if you have not the power to do that, then at least
procure me the happiness of being able to die with him."

CHAPTER XXXII. UNDECEIVED.

Parliament, which had not for a long time now ventured to offer any
further opposition to the king's will--Parliament had acquiesced in his
decree. It had accused Earl Surrey of high treason; and, on the sole
testimony of his mother and his sister, he had been declared guilty of
lese majeste and high treason. A few words of discontent at his removal
from office, some complaining remarks about the numerous executions that
drenched England's soil with blood--that was all that the Duchess of
Richmond had been able to bring against him. That he, like his father,
bore the arms of the Kings of England--that was the only evidence of
high treason of which his mother the Duchess of Norfolk could charge
him. [Footnote: Tytler, p. 402. Burnet, vol. i, p. 95.]

These accusations were of so trivial a character, that the Parliament
well knew they were not the ground of his arrest, but only a pretext for
it--only a pretext, by which the king said to his pliant and trembling
Parliament: "This man is innocent; but I will that you condemn him, and
therefore you w