Seymour laughed. "This is a masquerade, Catharine; and you still
wear a mask over your beautiful and charming face. Oh, away with that
mask, queen! I want to behold you as you are. I want to see again your
own beautiful self; I want to see the woman who belongs to me, and who
has sworn to be mine, and who has, with a thousand sacred oaths, vowed
to love me, to be true to me, and to follow me as her husband and her
lord. Or how, Catharine! Can you have forgotten your oath? Can you have
become untrue to your own heart? Do you want to cast me away, and throw
me, like a ball of which you are tired, to another?"

"Oh," said she, quite unconsciously, "I--I can never forget and never be
untrue."

"Well, then, my Catharine, the bride and wife of my future, what then
are you speaking to me of Elizabeth?--of this little princess, who sighs
for love as the flower-bud for the sun, and takes the first man whom
she finds in her way for the sun after which she pines? What care we for
Elizabeth, my Catharine? And what have we to do with that child in this
hour of long-wished-for reunion?"

"Oh, he calls me a child!" murmured Elizabeth. "I am nothing but a child
to him!" And she pressed her hands on her mouth in order to repress her
cry of anger and anguish, and to prevent them from hearing her teeth,
which were chattering as though she were in a chill.

With irresistible force Thomas Seymour drew Catharine into his arms.
"Avoid me no longer," said he, in tender entreaty. "The hour has come
which is finally to determine our destiny! The king is at the point of
death, and my Catharine will at length be free--free to follow her own
heart. At this hour I remind you of your oath! Do you remember
still that day when you referred me to this hour? Do you still know,
Catharine, how you vowed to be my wife and to receive me as the lord
of your future? Oh, my beloved, that crown which weighed down your head
will soon be taken away. Now I yet stand before you as your subject, but
in a few hours it will be your lord and your husband that stands before
you; and he will ask: 'Catharine, my wife, have you kept with me the
faith you swore to me? Have you been guiltless of perjury in respect
of your vows and your love? Have you preserved my honor, which is your
honor also, clear from every spot; and can you, free from guilt, look me
in the eye?"

He gazed at her with proud, flashing eyes, and before his commanding
look her firmness and her pride m