62.] Oh, say yourself, Catharine, must it not be a high and noble pleasure to confer glory and greatness on one we love, to raise him in the omnipotence of our love high above all other men, and to lay our own greatness, our own glory, humbly at his feet, that he may be adorned therewith and make his own possession what is ours ?" "By Heaven, you are as proud and ambitious as a man!" said Catharine, smiling.

"Your father's own daughter! So thought Henry when he gave his hand to Anne Boleyn; so thought he when he exalted me to be his queen.
But it behooves him thus to think and act, for he is a man." "He thought thus, because he loved--not because he was a man." "And you, too, Elizabeth--do you, too, think thus because you love ?" "Yes, I love!" exclaimed Elizabeth, as with an impulsive movement she threw herself into Catharine's arms, and hid her blushing face in the queen's bosom.

"Yes, I love! I love like my father--regardless of my rank, of my birth; but feeling only that my lover is of equally high birth in the nobility of his sentiment, in his genius and noble mind; that he is my superior in all the great and fine qualities which should adorn a man, and yet are conferred on so few.

Judge now, queen, whether that law there can make me happy.

He whom I love is no prince--no son of a king." "Poor Elizabeth!" said Catharine, clasping the young girl fervently in her arms.
"And why do you bewail my fate, when it is in your power to make me happy ?" asked Elizabeth, urgently.
"It was you who prevailed on the king to relieve me of the disgrace that rested on me; you will also have power over him to set aside this clause which contains my heart's sentence of condemnation." Catharine shook her head with a sigh.