Thomas Seymour laughed. “This is a masquerade, Catharine; and you still wear a mask over your beautiful and charming face. Oh, away with that mask, queen! I want to behold you as you are. I want to see again your own beautiful self; I want to see the woman who belongs to me, and who has sworn to be mine, and who has, with a thousand sacred oaths, vowed to love me, to be true to me, and to follow me as her husband and her lord. Or how, Catharine! Can you have forgotten your oath? Can you have become untrue to your own heart? Do you want to cast me away, and throw me, like a ball of which you are tired, to another?”
“Oh,” said she, quite unconsciously, “I—I can never forget and never be untrue.”
“Well, then, my Catharine, the bride and wife of my future, what then are you speaking to me of Elizabeth?—of this little princess, who sighs for love as the flower-bud for the sun, and takes the first man whom she finds in her way for the sun after which she pines? What care we for Elizabeth, my Catharine? And what have we to do with that child in this hour of long-wished-for reunion?”
“Oh, he calls me a child!” murmured Elizabeth. “I am nothing but a child to him!” And she pressed her hands on her mouth in order to repress her cry of anger and anguish, and to prevent them from hearing her teeth, which were chattering as though she were in a chill.
With irresistible force Thomas Seymour drew Catharine into his arms. “Avoid me no longer,” said he, in tender entreaty. “The hour has come which is finally to determine our destiny! The king is at the point of death, and my Catharine will at length be free—free to follow her own heart. At this hour I remind you of your oath! Do you remember still that day when you referred me to this hour? Do you still know, Catharine, how you vowed to be my wife and to receive me as the lord of your future? Oh, my beloved, that crown which weighed down your head will soon be taken away. Now I yet stand before you as your subject, but in a few hours it will be your lord and your husband that stands before you; and he will ask: ‘Catharine, my wife, have you kept with me the faith you swore to me? Have you been guiltless of perjury in respect of your vows and your love? Have you preserved my honor, which is your honor also, clear from every spot; and can you, free from guilt, look me in the eye?”
He gazed at her with proud, flashing eyes, and before his commanding look her firmness and her pride melted away like ice before the sunshine. Again he was the master, whose right it was to rule her heart; and she again the lowly handmaid, whose sweetest happiness it was to submit and bow to the will of her lover.
“I can look you frankly in the eye,” murmured she, “and no guilt burdens my conscience. I have loved naught but you, and my God only dwells near you in my heart.” Wholly overcome, wholly intoxicated with happiness, she leaned her head upon his shoulder, and as he clasped her in his arms, as he covered with kisses her now unresisting lips, she felt only that she loved him unutterably, and that there was no happiness for her except with him.
It was a sweet dream, a moment of most exquisite ecstasy. But it was only a moment. A hand was laid violently on her shoulder, a hoarse angry voice called her name; and as she looked up, she encountered the wild glance of Elizabeth, who stood before her with deathly pale cheeks, with trembling lips, with expanded nostrils, and eyes darting flashes of wrath and hatred.
“This, then, is the friendly service which you swore to me?” said she, gnashing her teeth. “Did you steal into my confidence, and with scoffing mouth spy out the secrets of my heart, in order to go away and betray them to your paramour? That you might in his arms ridicule this pitiable maiden, who allowed herself for the moment to be betrayed by her heart, and took a felon for an honorable man! Woe, woe to you, Catharine, for I tell you I will have no compassion on the adulteress, who mocks at me, and betrays my father!”
She was raving; completely beside herself with anger, she dashed away the hand which Catharine laid on her shoulder, and sprang back from the touch of her enemy like an irritated lioness.