d and his canting hypocrisy. At
his side stood his sisters, the Princesses Mary and Elizabeth. Both
were pale and of a sad countenance; but with both, it was not for their
father that they were grieving.

Mary, the bigoted Roman Catholic, saw with horror and bitter anguish the
days of adversity which were about to befall her church; for Edward was
a fanatical opponent of the Roman Catholic religion, and she knew that
he would shed the blood of the papists with relentless cruelty. On this
account it was that she mourned.

But Elizabeth, that young girl of ardent heart--she thought neither of
her father nor of the dangers threatening the Church; she thought only
of her love, she felt only that she had been deprived of a hope, of an
illusion--that she had awoke from a sweet and enchanting dream to the
rude and barren reality. She had given up her first love, but her heart
bled and the wound still smarted.

The will was read. Elizabeth looked toward Thomas Seymour during this
solemn and portentous reading. She wanted to read in his countenance
the impression made on him by these grave words, so pregnant with the
future; she wanted to search the depths of his soul, and to penetrate
the secret thoughts of his heart. She saw how he turned pale when, not
Queen Catharine, but his brother, Earl Hertford, was appointed regent
during Edward's minority; she saw the sinister, almost angry look which
he threw at the queen; and with a cruel smile she murmured:

"I am revenged! He loves her no longer!"

John Heywood, who was standing behind the queen's throne, had also
observed the look of Thomas Seymour, yet not like Elizabeth, with a
rejoicing, but with a sorrowful heart, and he dropped his head upon his
breast and murmured: "Poor Catharine! He will hate her, and she will be
very unhappy."

But she was still happy. Her eye beamed with pure delight when she
perceived that her lover was, by the king's will, appointed High Admiral
of England and guardian of the young king. She thought not of herself,
but only of him, of her lover; and it filled her with the proudest
satisfaction to see him invested with places of such high honor and
dignity.

Poor Catharine! Her eye did not see the sullen cloud which still rested
on the brow of her beloved. She was so happy and so innocent, and so
little ambitious! For her this only was happiness, to be her lover's, to
be the wife of Thomas Seymour.

And this happiness was to be hers. Thirty da