re of this!" cried Henry. "You suffer your resentment to carry you
too far."

"Too far!" exclaimed Catherine. "Too far!--Is to warn you that you are
about to take a wanton to your bed--and that you will bitterly repent
your folly when too late, going too far? It is my duty, Henry, no less
than my desire, thus to warn you ere the irrevocable step be taken."

"Have you said all you wish to say, madam?" demanded the king.

"No, my dear liege, not a hundredth part of what my heart prompts me
to utter," replied Catherine. "I conjure you by my strong and tried
affection--by the tenderness that has for years subsisted between us--by
your hopes of temporal prosperity and spiritual welfare--by all you hold
dear and sacred--to pause while there is yet time. Let the legates meet
to-morrow--let them pronounce sentence against me and as surely as those
fatal words are uttered, my heart will break."

"Tut, tut!" exclaimed Henry impatiently, "you will live many years in
happy retirement."

"I will die as I have lived--a queen," replied Catherine; "but my
life will not be long. Now, answer me truly--if Anne Boleyn plays you
false--"

"She never will play me false!" interrupted Henry.

"I say if she does," pursued Catherine, "and you are satisfied of her
guilt, will you be content with divorcing her as you divorce me?"

"No, by my father's head!" cried Henry fiercely. "If such a thing were
to happen, which I hold impossible, she should expiate her offence on
the scaffold."

"Give me your hand on that," said Catherine.

"I give you my hand upon it," he replied.

"Enough," said the queen: "if I cannot have right and justice I shall at
least have vengeance, though it will come when I am in my tomb. But it
will come, and that is sufficient."

"This is the frenzy of jealousy, Catherine," said Henry.

"No, Henry; it is not jealousy," replied the queen, with dignity. "The
daughter of Ferdinand of Spain and Isabella of Castile, with the
best blood of Europe in her veins, would despise herself if she could
entertain so paltry a feeling towards one born so much beneath her as
Anne Boleyn."

"As you will, madam," rejoined Henry. "It is time our interview
terminated."

"Not yet, Henry--for the love of Heaven, not yet!" implored Catherine.
"Oh, bethink you by whom we were joined together!--by your father, Henry
the Seventh--one of the wisest princes that ever sat on a throne; and by
the sanction of my own father, Ferdinand the Fif