er. Speaking of the marriage she
says: "I bait him with this ... and his words and professions have changed
for the better, although his acts remain the same.... They fancy that I
have no more in me than what outwardly appears, or that I shall not be
able to fathom his (Puebla's) design." Under stress of her circumstances
Katharine was developing rapidly. She was no longer a girl dependent upon
others. Dona Elvira had gone for good; Puebla she hated and distrusted as
much as she did Henry; and there was no one by her to whom she could look
for help. Her position was a terribly difficult one, pitted alone, as she
was, against the most unscrupulous politicians in Europe, in whose hands
she knew she was only one of the pieces in a game. Juana was still
carrying about with her the unburied corpse of her husband, and falling
into paroxysms of fury when a second marriage was suggested to her; and
yet Katharine considered it necessary to keep up the pretence to Henry
that his suit was prospering. She knew that though the Archduchess
Margaret had firmly refused to tempt providence again by a third marriage
with the King of England, the boy sovereign of Castile and Flanders, the
Archduke Charles, had been securely betrothed to golden-haired little Mary
Tudor, Henry's younger daughter; and that the close alliance thus sealed
was as dangerous to her father King Ferdinand's interests as to her own.
And yet she was either forced, or forced herself, to paint Henry, who was
still treating her vilely, in the brightest colours as a chivalrous,
virtuous gentleman, really and desperately in love with poor crazy Juana.
Katharine's letters to her sister on behalf of Henry's suit are nauseous,
in view of the circumstances as we know them; and show that the Princess
of Wales was already prepared to sacrifice every human feeling to
political expediency.

This miserable position could not continue indefinitely, for the
extension of time for the payment of the dowry was fast running out. Juana
was more intractable than ever. Katharine, in rage and despair at the
contumely with which she was treated, insisted at length that her father
should send an ambassador to England, who could speak as the mouthpiece of
a great sovereign rather than like a fawning menial of Henry as Puebla
was. The new ambassador was Gomez de Fuensalida, Knight Commander of Haro
and Membrilla, a man as haughty as Puebla had been servile, and he went
far beyond even Katharine'