Oh, Geraldine, I should deem it a fairer fate to die united with you, than to be obliged to still longer endure this life of constraint and hateful etiquette." "No, no," said she, trembling, "we will not die.

My God, life is indeed so beautiful when you are by my side! And who knows whether a felicitous and blissful future may not still await us ?" "Oh, should we die, then should we be certain of this blissful future, my Geraldine.

There, above, there is no more separation--no more renunciation for us.

There above, you are mine, and the bloody image of your husband no longer stands between us." "It shall no longer do so, even here on earth," whispered Geraldine.
"Come, my beloved; let us fly far, far hence, where no one knows us--where we can cast from us all this hated splendor, to live for each other and for love." She threw her arms about her lover, and in the ecstasy of her love she had wholly forgotten that she could never indeed think to flee with him, that he belonged to her only so long as he saw her not.
An inexplicable anxiety overpowered her heart; and in this anxiety she forgot everything--even the queen and the vengeance she had vowed.
She now remembered her father's words, and she trembled for her lover's life.
If now her father had not told her the truth--if now he had notwithstanding sacrificed Henry Howard in order to ruin the queen--if she was not able to save him, and through her fault he were to perish on the scaffold--above Henry the Eighth will no more be the judge, but the condemned criminal; "and your bloody and accursed deeds will witness against you!" The king laughed.

"You avail yourself of your advantage," said he.
"Because you have nothing more to lose and the scaffold is sure of you, you do not stick at heaping up the measure of your sins a little more, and you revile your legitimate, God-appointed king! But you should bear in mind, earl, that before the scaffold there is yet the rack, and that it is very possible indeed that a painful question might there be put to the noble Earl Surrey, to which his agonies might prevent him from returning an answer.