ceremonies of the day with a true queenly bearing and dignity;
and, as now with head proudly erect and firm step, she walked with a
bishop at either side through the splendid apartments, no one suspected
how heavy a burden weighed upon her heart, and what baleful voices were
whispering in her breast.

Followed by her new court, she had traversed with her companions the
state apartments, and now reached the inner rooms. Here, according to
the etiquette of the time, she must dismiss her court, and only the two
bishops and her ladies of honor were permitted to accompany the queen
into the drawing-room. But farther than this chamber even the bishops
themselves might not follow her. The king himself had written down
the order for the day, and he who swerved from this order in the most
insignificant point would have been proclaimed guilty of high treason,
and perhaps have been led out to death.

Catharine, therefore, turned with a languid smile to the two high
ecclesiastics, and requested them to await here her summons. Then
beckoning to her ladies of honor, she withdrew into her boudoir.

The two bishops remained by themselves in the drawing-room. The
circumstance of their being alone seemed to impress them both alike and
unpleasantly; for a dark scowl gathered on the brows of both, and they
withdrew, as if at a concerted signal, to the opposite sides of the
spacious apartment.

A long pause ensued. Nothing was heard save the regular ticking of a
large clock of rare workmanship which stood over the fireplace, and from
the street afar off, the rejoicing of the people, who surged toward the
palace like a roaring sea.

Gardiner had stepped to the window, and was looking up with his peculiar
dark smile at the clouds which, driven by the tempest, were sweeping
across the heavens.

Cranmer stood by the wall on the opposite side, and sunk in sad
thoughts, was contemplating a large portrait of Henry the Eighth,
the masterly production of Holbein. As he gazed on that countenance,
indicative at once of so much dignity and so much ferocity; as he
contemplated those eyes which shone with such gloomy severity, those
lips on which was a smile at once voluptuous and fierce, there came over
him a feeling of deep sympathy with the young woman whom he had that
day devoted to such splendid misery. He reflected that he had, in like
manner, already conducted two wives of the king to the marriage altar,
and had blessed their union. But he