scape from
her dungeon would bring her only ruin and death, and not freedom.

She must be patient and wait. She must give up all personal intercourse
with her lover; and even his letters John Heywood could bring her but
very seldom, and only with the greatest caution. How often already had
not John Heywood conjured her to give up this correspondence also! how
often had he not with tears in his eyes besought her to renounce this
love, which might one day be her ruin and her death! Catharine laughed
at his gloomy forebodings, and opposed to his dark prophecies a bravery
reliant on the future, the joyous courage of her love.

She would not die, for happiness and love were awaiting her; she would
not renounce happiness and love, for the sake of which she could endure
this life in other respects--this life of peril, of resignation, of
enmity, and of hatred.

But she wanted to live in order to be happy hereafter. This thought made
her brave and resolute; it gave her courage to defy her enemies with
serene brow and smiling lip; it enabled her to sit with bright eye and
rosy cheeks at the side of her dreaded and severe husband, and, with
cheerful wit and inexhaustible good-humor, jest away the frown from his
brow, and vexation from his soul.

But just because she could do this, she was a dangerous antagonist to
Douglas and Gardiner. Just on that account, it was to be their highest
effort to destroy this beautiful young woman, who durst defy them and
weaken their influence with the king. If they could but succeed in
rendering the king's mind more and more gloomy; if they could but
completely fill him again with fanatical religious zeal; then, and then
only, could they hope to attain their end; which end was this: to bring
back the king as a contrite, penitent, and humble son of the only saving
mother Church, and to make him again, from a proud, vain, and imperious
prince, an obedient and submissive son of the pope.

The king was to renounce this vain and blasphemous arrogance of wishing
to be himself head of his Church. He was to turn away from the spirit of
novelty and heresy, and again become a faithful and devout Catholic.

But in order that they might attain this end, Catharine must be removed
from him; he must no longer behold her rosy and beautiful face, and no
longer allow himself to be diverted by her sensible discourse and her
keen wit.

"We shall not be able to overthrow the queen," said Earl Douglas to
Gardine