the
safety of the nation, and to her own sovereignty, to remain alive, and
so the moment had come when Jane, so young and so full of the joy of
living, must reap what others had sown.

On the eighth of February, the news was carried to the prisoner. She
received her doom with dry-eyed dignity, but pleaded for mercy for her
husband, who she said was innocent, and had only obeyed his father in
all things, but the plea was disregarded and when the news was taken to
Guilford, unlike Lady Jane he thought only of himself, and wept and
begged and prayed for forgiveness,--but in vain!

It was originally intended that Jane and Guilford should be executed
together on Tower Hill, but this was not carried out, probably because
Lady Jane, being of blood royal, could be executed inside the precincts
of the Tower, where two queens of Henry the Eighth had been beheaded,
while Guilford, being of plebeian origin, was obliged to perish outside
the Tower walls.

While awaiting the fatal day, Jane occupied herself in writing a letter
to her father, in which she held him responsible for her death, and then
probably spent Sunday the 10th of February, in prayer and meditation,
and on the following day she wrote a beautiful letter to her sister
Katherine, of whose terrible grief on her account she had been told. The
letter was written on the blank leaves of a Greek testament, which has
fortunately been preserved, and can be seen to-day in the British
Museum.

Lord Guilford Dudley begged for an interview with his wife before their
death, but this Lady Jane declined, saying that it would unnerve them
both for the supreme moment, although she sent a message to her husband,
and on the day of the execution, at the time when he was to pass her
window on his way to the scaffold, she stood and waved her hand to him,
as he passed, in the strength of his youth and manhood, to the horrible
grave dug for him by his own father's hand, facing death bravely at the
end.

Then a ghastly accident occurred. Either by accident or by design, Jane
caught a glimpse of her husband's body as it was being carried from the
scaffold to the Tower for burial, and for a time it seemed as if her
frail young frame could not resist the strain of that agony of sorrow
and fear which overcame her; but at last Lady Jane was on her way to
meet her doom.

The bells of the churches tolled as the dread procession wound its way
slowly to the foot of the scaffold, and the young