“You are right,” replied Lady Boleyn; “that is true. I did love him, and I love him still; but I feel that it is impossible to love very long a person whom one cannot respect.”
“Better to have thought of that sooner,” murmured the maid; but she took care not to say so aloud.
Absorbed as she was in her sorrow, Lady Boleyn did not forget the care of her toilet, and, to assist in drying her tears, she turned the Venetian mirror in every direction in order to survey herself; but she was by no means satisfied with the ensemble nor the details it presented to her.
“See!” she cried, “how badly these sleeves fit; and these heavy plaits around my waist. In sooth, never was I so badly dressed. This white satin robe with silver flowers is frightful.… Besides, I wanted a rose-colored dress, … but of a color that is not here. They leave me with naught indeed. This
may not be borne. Go, bid all my women enter; I would know what they think of me.”
Anne Savage ran to open the door. Scarcely had she opened it.…
But let us leave the frivolous and coquettish Boleyn to adorn with so much care that form which the dust of the tomb has long since claimed, and follow rather this man, all flushed, out of breath, and hurried, who eagerly mounts the stairs in search of the king. The guards are standing near the doors; the mats on which they passed the night are still lying on the floor in the lower hall of the palace; they rub their half-opened eyes, still bewildered with sleep. They offer the usual salutations to Norris, who advances, and whom they recognize; but he passes through their midst without seeming to perceive them, and enters abruptly the apartment of the king.
Henry VIII., leaning against one of the windows, his face pressed close to the glass, was gazing eagerly out to behold all he had been able to see of Catherine’s departure; but, hearing the door open, he turned quickly around, withdrew from the window, and, going to the far end of the apartment, took his seat.
“Well, good Norris,” he said, looking attentively at him, “what a sad air you wear! It was, then, very difficult to get Catherine off? I had foreseen it all, however.”
“Your majesty had foreseen it all, and yet methinks you have chosen not to be by the while.”