nquered his opponent, Henry Howard. The king had been in raptures
on this account. For Thomas Seymour had been for some time his favorite;
perhaps because he was the declared enemy of the Howards. He had,
therefore, added to the golden laurel crown which the queen had
presented to the earl as the award, a diamond pin, and commanded the
queen to fasten it in the earl's ruff with her own hand. Catharine
had done so with sullen countenance and averted looks; and even Thomas
Seymour had shown himself only a very little delighted with the proud
honor with which the queen, at her husband's command, was to grace him.

The rigid popish party at court formed new hopes from this, and dreamed
of the queen's conversion and return to the true, pure faith; while
the Protestant, "the heretical" party, looked to the future with gloomy
despondency, and were afraid of being robbed of their most powerful
support and their most influential patronage.

Nobody had seen that, as the queen arose to crown the victor, Thomas
Seymour, her handkerchief, embroidered with gold, fell from her hands,
and that the earl, after he had taken it up and presented it to the
queen, had thrust his hand for a moment, with a motion wholly accidental
and undesigned, into his ruff, which was just as white as the small
neatly-folded paper which he concealed in it, and which he had found in
the queen's handkerchief.

One person had seen it. This little ruse of the queen had not escaped
John Heywood, who had immediately, by some cutting witticism, set the
king to laughing, and tried to draw the attention of the courtiers from
the queen and her lover.

He was now standing crowded into the embrasure of a window, and entirely
concealed behind the silk curtain; and so, without being seen, he let
his falcon eyes roam over the whole room.

He saw everything; he heard everything; and, noticed by none, he
observed all.

He saw how Earl Douglas now made a sign to Bishop Gardiner, and how he
quickly answered it.

As if by accident, both now left the groups with whom they had just been
chatting, and drew near each other, looking about for some place where,
unobserved and separated from the rest, they might converse together. In
all the windows were standing groups, chatting and laughing; only that
window behind the curtain of which John Heywood was concealed, was
unoccupied.

So Earl Douglas and the bishop turned thither.

"Shall we attain our end to-day?" asked Gard