“Sire, I dared not reveal the deception to you before you had sentenced Surrey, for your noble and just moral sense would have been reluctant to punish him on account of a crime that he had not committed; and in your first wrath you would also have blamed this noble woman who has sacrificed herself for her king.”
“It is true,” said the king, “I should have misjudged this noble woman, and, instead of thanking her, I should have destroyed her.”
“Therefore, my king, I quietly allowed you to make out an order for the queen’s incarceration. But you remember well, sire, I begged you to return to your apartments before the queen was arrested. Well, now, there I should have disclosed to you the whole secret, which I could not tell you in the presence of that woman. For she would die of shame if she suspected that you knew of her love for the king, so pure and self-sacrificing, and cherished in such heroic silence.”
“She shall never know it, Douglas! But now at length satisfy my desire. Tell me her name.”
“Sire, you have forgiven me, then? You are no longer angry with me that I dared to deceive you?”
“I am no longer angry with you, Douglas; for you have acted rightly. The plan, which you have contrived and carried out with such happy results, was as crafty as it was daring.”
“I thank you, sire; and I will now tell you the name. That woman, sire, who at my wish gave herself up a sacrifice to this adulterous earl, who endured his kisses, his embraces, his vows of love, in order to render a service to her king—that woman was my daughter, Lady Jane Douglas!”
“Lady Jane!” cried the king. “No, no, this is a new deception. That haughty, chaste, and unapproachable Lady Jane—that wonderfully beautiful marble statue really has then a heart in her breast, and that heart belongs to me? Lady Jane, the pure and chaste virgin, has made for me this prodigious sacrifice, of receiving this hated Surrey as her lover, in order, like a second Delilah, to deliver him into my hand? No, Douglas, you are lying to me. Lady Jane has not done that!”
“May it please your majesty to go yourself and take a look at that fainting woman, who was to Henry Howard the queen.”
The king did not reply to him; but he drew back the curtain and reentered the cabinet, in which the queen was waiting with John Heywood.