第86章 BROTHER AND SISTER.(4)

we two are separated from you in our love--but not in our hate! Our hatred to you remains eternal and unchangeable; and one day it will crush you! Farewell, Earl of Surrey; we meet again in the king's presence!"She rushed to the door. Henry Howard did not hold her back. He looked after her with a smile as she left the cabinet, and murmured, almost compassionately: "Poor woman! I have, perhaps, cheated her out of a lover, and she will never forgive me that. Well, let it be so! Let her, as much as she pleases, be my enemy, and torment me with petty pin-prickings, if she be but unable to harm her. I hope, though, that I have guarded well my secret, and she could not suspect the real cause of my refusal. Ah, I was obliged to wrap myself in that foolish family pride, and make haughtiness a cloak for my love. Oh, Geraldine, thee would I choose, wert thou the daughter of a peasant; and I would not hold my escutcheon tarnished, if for thy sake I must draw a pale athwart it.--But hark! It is striking four! My service begins! Farewell, Geraldine, I must to the queen!"And while he betook himself to his dressing-room, to put on his state robes for the great court feast, the Duchess of Richmond returned to her own apartments, trembling and quivering with rage.

She traversed these with precipitate haste, and entered her boudoir, where Earl Douglas was waiting for her.

"Well," said he, stepping toward her with his soft, lurking smile, "has he consented?""No," said she, gnashing her teeth. "He swore he would never enter into an alliance with the Seymours.""I well knew that," muttered the earl. "And what do you decide upon now, my lady?""I will have revenge! He wants to hinder me from being happy; I will for that make him unhappy!""You will do well in that, my lady; for he is an apostate and perjurer; an unfaithful son of the Church. He inclines to the heretical sect, and has forgotten the faith of his fathers.""I know it!" said she, breathlessly.

Earl Douglas looked at her in astonishment, and continued: "But he is not merely an atheist, he is a traitor also; and more than once he has reviled his king, to whom he, in his pride of heart, believes himself far superior.""I know it!" repeated she.

"So proud is he," continued the earl, "so full of blasphemous haughtiness, that he might lay his hands upon the crown of England.""I know it!" said the duchess again. But as she saw the earl's astonished and doubting looks, she added, with an inhuman smile: "Iknow everything that you want that I should know! Only impute crimes to him; only accuse him; I will substantiate everything, testify to everything that will bring him to ruin. My mother is our ally; she hates the father as hotly as I the son. Bring your accusation, then, Earl Douglas; we are your witnesses!""Nay, indeed, my lady," said he, with a gentle, insinuating smile.

"I know nothing at all; I have heard nothing; how, then, can I bring an accusation? You know all; to you he has spoken. You must be his accuser!""Well, then, conduct me to the king!" said she.

"Will you allow me to give you some more advice first?""Do so, Earl Douglas.""Be very cautious in the choice of your means. Do not waste them all at once, so that if your first thrust does not hit, you may not be afterward without weapons. It is better, and far less dangerous, to surely kill the enemy that you hate with a slow, creeping poison, gradually and day by day, than to murder him at once with a dagger, which may, however, break on a rib and become ineffective. Tell, then, what you know, not at once, but little by little. Administer your drug which is to make the king furious, gradually; and if you do not hit your enemy to-day, think that you will do it so much the more surely to-morrow. Nor do you forget that we have to punish, not merely the heretic Henry Howard, but above all things the heretical queen, whose unbelief will call down the wrath of the Most High upon this land.""Come to the king," said she, hastily. "On the way you can tell me what I ought to make known and what conceal. I will do implicitly what you say. Now, Henry Howard," said she softly to herself, "hold yourself ready; the contest begins! In your pride and selfishness you have destroyed the happiness of my life--my eternal felicity. Iloved Thomas Seymour; I hoped by his side to find the happiness that I have so long and so vainly sought in the crooked paths of life. By this love my soul would have been saved and restored to virtue. My brother has willed otherwise. He has, therefore, condemned me to be a demon, instead of an angel. I will fulfil my destiny. I will be an evil spirit to him." [Footnote: The Earl of Surrey, by his refusal to marry Margaret Seymour, gave occasion to the rupture of the proposed alliance between Thomas Seymour and the Duchess of Richmond, his sister. After that the duchess mortally hated him and combined with his enemies against him. The Duchess of Richmond is designated by all the historians of her time as "the most beautiful woman of her century, but also a shameless Messalina."--See Tytler, p. 890. Also Burnet, vol. i, p. 134; Leti, vol. i, p. 83; and Nott's Life of Henry Howard.]