benefit to our object I can
draw from it."

Lord Douglas shook his head, and smiled incredulously. At length he said
solemnly: "Take care, Jane, take care that your heart does not deceive
your head. If we would reach our aim here, you must, above all things,
maintain a cool heart and a cool head. Do you still possess both, Jane?"

In confusion she cast down her eyes before his penetrating look. Lord
Douglas noticed it, and a passionate word was already on his lips. But
he kept it back. As a prudent diplomat, he knew that it is often more
politic to destroy a thing by ignoring it, than to enter into an open
contest with it. The feelings are like the dragons' teeth of Theseus.
If you contend with them, they always grow again anew, and with renewed
energy, out of the soil. Lord Douglas, therefore, was very careful not
to notice his daughter's confusion. "Pardon me, my daughter, if, in my
zeal and my tender care for you, I go too far. I know that your dear and
beautiful head is cool enough to wear a crown. I know that in your heart
dwell only ambition and religion. Let us, then, further consider what we
have to do in order to attain our end.

"We have spoken of Henry as a husband, of Henry as a man; and I hope
you have drawn some useful lessons from the fate of his wives. You have
learned that it is necessary to possess all the good and all the bad
qualities of woman in order to control this stiff-necked and tyrannical,
this lustful and bigoted, this vain and sensual man, whom the wrath of
God has made King of England. You must, before all things, be perfect
master of the difficult art of coquetry. You must become a female
Proteus--today a Messalina, to-morrow a nun; to-day one of the
_literati_, to-morrow a playful child; you must ever seek to surprise
the king, to keep him on the stretch, to enliven him. You must never
give way to the dangerous feeling of security, for in fact King Henry's
wife is never safe. The axe always hangs over her head, and you must
ever consider your husband as only a fickle lover, whom you must every
day captivate anew."

"You speak as though I were already queen," said Lady Jane, smiling;
"and yet I cannot but think that, in order to come to that, many
difficulties are to be overcome, which may indeed perhaps be
insuperable."

"Insuperable!" exclaimed her father with a shrug of the shoulders. "With
the aid of the holy Church, no hinderance is insuperable. Only, we must
be perfectly acqua