“Why am I angry with him, do you ask, my mother? I am not angry with him; but I execrate him, and I have sworn to myself never to rest till I have avenged myself. My happiness, my heart, and my future, lay in his hands; and he has remorselessly trodden under his haughty feet these—his sister’s precious treasures. It lay with him to make me the wife of the man I love; and he has not done it, though I lay at his feet weeping and wringing my hands.”
“But it was a great sacrifice that you demanded,” said her mother. “He had to give his hand to a woman he did not love, so that you might be Thomas Seymour’s wife.”
“Mother, you defend him; and yet he it is that blames you daily; and but yesterday it seemed to him perfectly right and natural that the duke had forsaken you, our mother.”
“Did he do that?” inquired the duchess, vehemently. “Well, now, as he has forgotten that I am his mother, so will I forget that he is my son. I am your ally! Revenge for our injured hearts! Vengeance on father and son!”
She held out both hands, and the two young women laid their hands in hers.
“Vengeance on father and son!” repeated they both; and their eyes flashed, and crimson now mantled their cheeks.
“I am tired of living like a hermit in my palace, and of being banished from court by the fear that I may encounter my husband there.”
“You shall encounter him there no more,” said her daughter, laconically.
“They shall not laugh and jeer at me,” cried Arabella. “And when they learn that he has forsaken me, they shall also know how I have avenged myself for it.”
“Thomas Seymour can never become my husband so long as Henry Howard lives; for he has mortally offended him, as Henry has rejected the hand of his sister. Perhaps I may become his wife, if Henry Howard is no more,” said the young duchess. “So let us consider. How shall we begin, so as to strike them surely and certainly?”