will say that I plunged down there
with my horse, and that the raging animal caused my death."

"Queen, take good heed, consider well what you say!" exclaimed Thomas
Seymour, his countenance clearing up and his face flaming with delight.
"Bear in mind that your words must be either a condemnation or an
avowal. I wish death, or your love! Not the love of a queen, who thinks
to be gracious to her subject, when for the moment she elevates him
to herself; but the love of a woman who bows her head in meekness and
receives her lover as at the same time her lord. Oh, Catharine, be well
on your guard! If you come to me with the pride of a queen, if there be
even one thought in you which tells you that you are bestowing a favor
on a subject as you take him to your heart, then be silent and let me
go hence. I am proud, and as nobly born as yourself, and however love
throws me conquered at your feet, yet it shall not bow my head in
the dust! But if you say that you love me, Catharine, for that I will
consecrate my whole life to you. I will be your lord, but your slave
also. There shall be in me no thought, no feeling, no wish that is not
devoted and subservient to you. And when I say that I will be your lord,
I mean not thereby that I will not lie forever at your feet and bow my
head in the dust, and say to you: Tread on it, if it seem good to you,
for I am your slave!"

And speaking thus, he dropped on his knees and pressed to her feet his
face, whose glowing and noble expression ravished Catharine's heart.

She hent down to him, and gently lifting his head, looked with an
indescribable expression of happiness and love deep into his beaming
eyes.

"Do you love me?" asked Seymour, as he put his arm softly around her
slender waist, and arose from his kneeling attitude.

"I love you!" said she, with a firm voice and a happy smile. "I love
you, not as a queen, but as a woman; and if perchance this love bring us
both to the scaffold, well then we shall at least die together, to meet
again there above!"

"No, think not now of dying, Catharine, think of living--of the
beautiful, enchanting future which is beckoning to us. Think of the
days which will soon come, and in which our love will no longer require
secresy or a veil, but when we will manifest it to the whole world, and
can proclaim our happiness from a full glad breast! Oh, Catharine, let
us hope that compassionate and merciful death will loose at last the
unnatural bonds