ste
soul. She concealed from the world her pain and her grief, as bashfully
as she had once done her love. Nobody suspected what she suffered and
how she struggled with her crushed heart.

She never complained; she saw bloom after bloom fall from her life; she
saw the smile disappear from her husband's countenance; she heard his
voice, at first so tender, gradually harden to harsher tones; she
felt his heart growing colder and colder, and his love changing into
indifference, perhaps even into hate.

She had devoted her whole heart to love, but she felt day by day, and
hour by hour, that her husband's heart was cooling more and more. She
felt, with dreadful heartrending certainty, she was his with all her
love.

But he was no longer hers.

And she tormented her heart to find out why he no longer loved her--what
she had been guilty of, that he turned away from her. Seymour had not
the delicacy and magnanimity to conceal from her his inward thoughts;
and at last she comprehended why he neglected her.

He had hoped that Catharine would be Regent of England, that he then
would be consort of the regent. Because it had not happened so his love
had died.

Catharine felt this, and she died of it. But not suddenly, not at once,
did death release her from her sorrows and racking tortures. Six months
she had to suffer and struggle with them. After six months she died.

Strange rumors were spread at her death; and John Heywood never passed
by Earl Seymour without gazing at him with an angry look, and saying:
"You have murdered the beautiful queen! Deny it, if you can!"

Thomas Seymour laughed, and did not consider it worth his while
to defend himself against the accusations of the fool. He laughed,
notwithstanding he had not yet put off the mourning he wore for
Catharine.

In these mourning garments he ventured to approach the Princess
Elizabeth, to swear to her his ardent love, and sue for her hand. But
Elizabeth repelled him with coldness and haughty contempt; and, like the
fool, the princess also said: "You have murdered Catharine! I cannot be
the wife of a murderer!"

And God's justice punished the murderer of the innocent and noble
Catharine; and scarcely three months after the death of his wife, the
high admiral had to ascend the scaffold, and was executed as a traitor.

By Catharine's wish, her books and papers were given to her true friend
John Heywood, and he undertook with the greatest care an examination of