“Then let us go to the king!” cried Arabella, impetuously.
“No, indeed! That would make a sensation, and might easily frustrate our whole plan,” said the Duchess of Richmond. “Let us first talk with Earl Douglas, and hear his advice. Come; every minute is precious! We owe it to our womanly honor to avenge ourselves. We cannot and will not leave unpunished those who have despised our love, wounded our honor, and trodden under foot the holiest ties of nature!”
CHAPTER XXVII. THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT.
The Princess Elizabeth was sitting in her room, melancholy and absorbed in thought. Her eyes were red with weeping; and she pressed her hand on her heart, as if she would repress its cry of anguish.
With a disconsolate, perplexed look she gazed around her chamber, and its solitude was doubly painful to her to-day, for it testified to her forsaken condition, to the disgrace that still rested on her. For were it not so, to-day would have been to the whole court a day of rejoicing, of congratulations.
To-day was Elizabeth’s birthday; fourteen years ago to-day, Anne Boleyn’s daughter had seen the light of this world.
“Anne Boleyn’s daughter!” That was the secret of her seclusion. That was why none of the ladies and lords of the court had remembered her birthday; for that would have been at the same time a remembrance of Anne Boleyn, of Elizabeth’s beautiful and unfortunate mother, who had been made to atone for her grandeur and prosperity by her death.
Moreover, the king had called his daughter Elizabeth a bastard, and solemnly declared her unworthy of succeeding to the throne.
Her birthday, therefore, was to Elizabeth only a day of humiliation and pain. Reclining on her divan, she thought of her despised and joyless past, of her desolate and inglorious future.