o make
another attempt to prejudice the king's mind against his consort. Henry
had interdicted him from it under the penalty of his wrath. With words
of threatening, he had warned him from such an attempt; and Earl Douglas
very well knew that King Henry was inflexible in his determination,
when the matter under consideration was the execution of a threatened
punishment, Yet what Douglas durst not venture, that Gardiner could
venture--Gardiner, who, thanks to the capriciousness of the sick king,
had for the few days past enjoyed again the royal favor so unreservedly
that the noble Archbishop Cranmer had received orders to leave the court
and retire to his episcopal residence at Lambeth.

Catharine had seen him depart with anxious forebodings; for Cranmer had
ever been her friend and her support. His mild and serene countenance
had ever been to her like a star of peace in the midst of this
tempest-tossed and passion-lashed court life; and his gentle and noble
words had always fallen like a soothing balm on her poor trembling
heart.

She felt that with his departure she lost her noblest support, her
strengthening aid, and that she was now surrounded only by enemies and
opponents. True, she still had John Heywood, the faithful friend, the
indefatigable servant; but since Gardiner had exercised his sinister
influence over the king's mind, John Heywood durst scarcely risk himself
in Henry's presence. True, she had also Thomas Seymour, her lover;
but she knew and felt that she was everywhere surrounded by spies and
eavesdroppers, and that now it required nothing more than an interview
with Thomas Seymour--a few tender words--perchance even only a look full
of mutual understanding and love, in order to send him and her to the
scaffold.

She trembled not for herself, but for her lover. That made her cautious
and thoughtful. That gave her courage never to show Thomas Seymour
other than a cold, serious face; never to meet him otherwise than in the
circle of her court; never to smile on him; never to give him her hand.

She was, however, certain of her future. She knew that a day would come
on which the king's death would deliver her from her burdensome grandeur
and her painful royal crown; when she should be free--free to give her
hand to the man whom alone on earth she loved, and to become his wife.

She waited for that day, as the prisoner does for the hour of his
release; but like him she knew that a premature attempt to e