who
laughs at the folly of her youth, and despises to-day what she
adored yesterday. I have nothing to do with you; and you are even too
insignificant and too contemptible for my anger. But I tell you, you
have played a hazardous game, and you will lose. You courted a queen
and a princess, and you will gain neither of them: not the one, for she
despises you; not the other, for she ascends the scaffold!"

With a wild laugh she was hurrying to the door, but Catharine with a
strong hand held her back and compelled her to remain. "What are you
going to do?" asked she, with perfect calmness and composure.

"What am I going to do?" asked Elizabeth, her eyes flashing like those
of a lioness. "You ask me what I will do? I will go to my father, and
tell him what I have here witnessed! He will listen to me; and his
tongue will still have strength enough to pronounce your sentence of
death! Oh, my mother died on the scaffold, and yet she was innocent. We
will see, forsooth, whether you will escape the scaffold--you, who are
guilty!"

"Well, then, go to your father," said Catharine; "go and accuse me. But
first you shall hear me. This man whom I loved, I wanted to renounce,
in order to give him to you. By the confession of your love, you had
crushed my happiness and my future. But I was not angry with you. I
understood you heart, for Thomas Seymour is worthy of being loved.
But you are right; for the king's wife it was a sinful love, however
innocent and pure I may have been. On that account I wanted to renounce
it; on that account I wanted, on the first confession from you,
to silently sacrifice myself. You yourself have now made it an
impossibility. Go, then, and accuse us to your father, and fear not that
I will belie my heart. Now, that the crisis has come, it shall find me
prepared; and on the scaffold I will still account myself blest, for
Thomas Seymour loves me!"

"Ay, he loves you, Catharine!" cried he, completely overcome and
enchanted by her noble, majestic bearing.

"He loves you so warmly and ardently, that death with you seems to him
an enviable lot; and he would not exchange it for any throne nor for any
crown."

And as he thus spoke, he put his arms around Catharine's neck, and
impetuously drew her to his heart.

Elizabeth uttered a fierce scream, and sprang to the door. But what
noise was that which all at once drew nigh; which suddenly, like a wild
billow, came roaring on, and filled the anterooms and th