"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.