he then
said, "is it not true we shall often see each other? We will both keep
this secret of this tower faithfully and sacredly; and after days full
of privation and disappointment, we will here keep festival the nights
full of blissful pleasure and sweet transport. But why do you smile,
Seymour?"

"I smile, because you are pure and innocent as an angel," said he, as
he reverently kissed her hand. "I smile, because you are an exalted,
godlike child, whom one ought to adore upon his knees, and to whom one
ought to pray, as to the chaste goddess Vesta! Yes, my dear, beloved
child, here we will, as you say, pass nights full of blissful pleasure;
and may I be reprobate and damned, if I should ever be capable of
betraying this sweet, guileless confidence with which you favor me, and
sully your angel purity!"

"Ah, we will be very happy, Seymour!" said she, smiling. "I lack only
one thing--a friend, to whom I can tell my happiness, to whom I can
speak of you. Oh, it often seems to me as if this love, which must
always be concealed, always shut up, must at last burst my breast; as if
this secret must with violence break a passage, and roar like a tempest
over the whole world. Seymour, I want a confidante of my happiness and
my love."

"Guard yourself well against desiring to seek such a one!" exclaimed
Seymour, anxiously. "A secret that three know, is a secret no more; and
one day your confidante will betray us."

"Not so; I know a woman who would be incapable of that--a woman who
loves me well enough to keep my secret as faithfully as I myself; a
woman who could be more than merely a confidante, who could be the
protectress of our love. Oh, believe me, if we could gain her to our
side, then our future would be a happy and a blessed one, and we might
easily succeed in obtaining the king's consent to our marriage."

"And who is this woman?"

"It is the queen."

"The queen!" cried Thomas Seymour, with such an expression of horror
that Elizabeth trembled; "the queen your confidante? But that is
impossible! That would be plunging us both inevitably into ruin. Unhappy
child, be very careful not to mention even a single word, a syllable of
your relation to me. Be very careful not to betray to her, even by the
slightest intimation, that Thomas Seymour is not indifferent to you! Ah,
her wrath would dash to pieces you and me!"

"And why do you believe that?" asked Elizabeth, gloomily. "Why do you
suppose that Catharine woul