But she was still happy. Her eye beamed with pure delight when she perceived that her lover was, by the king’s will, appointed High Admiral of England and guardian of the young king. She thought not of herself, but only of him, of her lover; and it filled her with the proudest satisfaction to see him invested with places of such high honor and dignity.
Poor Catharine! Her eye did not see the sullen cloud which still rested on the brow of her beloved. She was so happy and so innocent, and so little ambitious! For her this only was happiness, to be her lover’s, to be the wife of Thomas Seymour.
And this happiness was to be hers. Thirty days after the death of King Henry the Eighth she became the wife of the high admiral, Thomas Seymour, Earl of Sudley. Archbishop Cranmer solemnized their union in the chapel at Whitehall, and the lord protector, now Duke of Somerset, formerly Earl of Hertford, the brother of Thomas Seymour, was the witness of this marriage, which was, however, still kept a secret, and of which there were to be no other witnesses. When, however, they resorted to the chapel for the marriage, Princess Elizabeth came forward to meet the queen, and offered her hand.
It was the first time they had met since the dreadful day on which they confronted each other as enemies—the first time that they had again seen each other eye to eye.
Elizabeth had wrung this sacrifice from her heart. Her proud soul revolted at the thought that Thomas Seymour might imagine that she was still grieving for him, that she still loved him. She would show him that her heart was entirely recovered from that first dream of her youth—that she had not the least regret or pain.
She accosted him with a haughty, cold smile, and presented Catharine her hand. “Queen,” said she, “you have so long been a kind and faithful mother to me, that I may well once more claim the right of being your daughter. Let me, therefore, as your daughter, be present at the solemn transaction in which you are about to engage; and allow me to stand at your side and pray for you, whilst the archbishop performs the sacred service, and transforms the queen into the Countess of Sudley. May God bless you, Catharine, and give you all the happiness that you deserve!”
And Princess Elizabeth knelt at Catharine’s side, as the archbishop blest this new marriage tie. And while she prayed her eye again glided over toward Thomas Seymour, who was standing there by his young wife. Catharine’s countenance beamed with beauty and happiness, but upon Thomas Seymour’s brow still lay the cloud that had settled there on that day when the king’s will was opened—that will which did not make Queen Catharine regent, and which thereby destroyed Thomas Seymour’s proud and ambitious schemes.
And that cloud remained on Thomas Seymour’s brow. It sank down lower and still lower. It soon overshadowed the happiness of Catharine’s love, and awakened her from her short dream of bliss.
What she suffered, how much of secret agony and silent woe she endured, who can wish to know or conjecture? Catharine had a proud and a chaste soul. She concealed from the world her pain and her grief, as bashfully as she had once done her love. Nobody suspected what she suffered and how she struggled with her crushed heart.
She never complained; she saw bloom after bloom fall from her life; she saw the smile disappear from her husband’s countenance; she heard his voice, at first so tender, gradually harden to harsher tones; she felt his heart growing colder and colder, and his love changing into indifference, perhaps even into hate.