“Yes, sire, it throbs, oh, it often throbs to bursting! When I hear your voice, when I behold your countenance, it is as if a cold tremor rilled through my whole being, and drove all my blood to the heart. It is as though my heart anticipated your approach before my eyes discern you. For even before you draw near me, I feel a peculiar trembling of the heart, and the breath is stifled in my bosom; then I always know that you are coming, and that your presence will relieve this peculiar tension of my being. When you are not by me I think of you, and when I sleep I dream of you. Tell me, sire, you who know every thing, tell me, know you now whether I love you?”
“Yes, yes, you love me,” cried Henry, to whom this strange and joyous surprise had imparted youthful vivacity and warmth. “Yes, Kate, you love me; and if I may trust your dear confession, I am your first love. Repeat it yet again; you were nothing but a daughter to Lord Neville?”
“Nothing more, sire!”
“And after him have you had no love?”
“None, sire!”
“And can it be that so happy a marvel has come to pass? and that I have made, not a widow, but a young maiden, my queen?”
As he now gazed at her with warm, passionate, tender looks, Catharine cast down her eyes, and a deep blush covered her sweet face.
“Ah, a woman’s bashful blushes, what an exquisite sight!” cried the king, and while he wildly pressed Catharine to his bosom, he continued: “Oh, are we not foolish and short-sighted men, all of us, yes, even we kings? In order that I might not be, perhaps, forced to send my sixth wife also to the scaffold, I chose, in trembling dread of the deceitfulness of your sex, a widow for my queen, and this widow with a blessed confession, mocks at the new law of the wise Parliament, and makes good to me what she never promised.” [Footnote: After Catharine Howard’s infidelity and incontinency had been proved, and she had atoned for them by her death, Parliament enacted a law “that if the king or his successors should intend to marry any woman whom they took to be a clean and pure maid—if she, not being so, did not declare the same to the king, it should be high treason: and all who knew it; and did not reveal it, were guilty of misprision of treason.”—“Burnet’s History of the Reformation of the Church of England.” London, 1681 (vol. i, p. 313)]
“Come, Kate, give me a kiss. You have opened before me to-day a happy, blissful future, and prepared for me a great and unexpected pleasure. I thank you for it, Kate, and the Mother of God be my witness, I will never forget it.”
And drawing a rich diamond ring from his own finger, and putting it upon Catharine’s, he continued: “Be this ring a remembrancer of this hour, and when you hereafter present it to me, with a request, I will grant that request, Kate!”