se whom she will. I could not refuse. I must either die or accept
the royal hand which was extended to me; and I would not die yet, I have
still so many claims on life, and it has hitherto made good so few of
them! Ah, my poor, hapless existence! what has it been, but an endless
chain of renunciations and deprivations, of leafless flowers and
dissolving views? It is true, I have never learned to know what is
usually called misfortune. But is there a greater misfortune than not to
be happy; than to sigh through a life without wish or hope; to wear away
the endless, weary days of an existence without delight, yet surrounded
with luxury and splendor?"

"You were not unfortunate, and yet you are an orphan, fatherless and
motherless?"

"I lost my mother so early that I scarcely knew her. And when my father
died I could hardly consider it other than a blessing, for he had never
shown himself a father, but always only as a harsh, tyrannical master to
me."

"But you were married?"

"Married!" said Catharine, with a melancholy smile. "That is to say,
my father sold me to a gouty old man, on whose couch I spent a few
comfortless, awfully wearisome years, till Lord Neville made me a rich
widow. But what did my independence avail me, when I had bound myself in
new fetters? Hitherto I had been the slave of my father, of my husband;
now I was the slave of my wealth. I ceased to be a sick-nurse to become
steward of my estate. Ah! this was the most tedious period of my life.
And yet I owe to it my only real happiness, for at that period I became
acquainted with you, my Jane, and my heart, which had never yet learned
to know a tenderer feeling, flew to you with all the impetuosity of a
first passion. Believe me, my Jane, when this long-missing nephew of my
husband came and snatched away from me his hereditary estate, and, as
the lord, took possession of it, then the thought that I must leave
you and your father, the neighboring proprietor, was my only grief. Men
commiserated me on account of my lost property. I thanked God that He
had relieved me of this load, and I started for London, that I might at
last live and feel, that I might learn to know real happiness or real
misery."

"And what did you find?"

"Misery, Jane, for I am queen."

"Is that your sole unhappiness?"

"My only one, but it is great enough, for it condemns me to eternal
anxiety, to eternal dissimulation. It condemns me to feign a love which
I do not feel, to