I want to see again your own beautiful self; I want to see the woman who belongs to me, and who has sworn to be mine, and who has, with a thousand sacred oaths, vowed to love me, to be true to me, and to follow me as her husband and her lord.

Or how, Catharine! Can you have forgotten your oath?
Can you have become untrue to your own heart?
Do you want to cast me away, and throw me, like a ball of which you are tired, to another ?" "Oh," said she, quite unconsciously, "I--I can never forget and never be untrue." "Well, then, my Catharine, the bride and wife of my future, what then are you speaking to me of Elizabeth ?--of this little princess, who sighs for love as the flower-bud for the sun, and takes the first man whom she finds in her way for the sun after which she pines?
What care we for Elizabeth, my Catharine?
And what have we to do with that child in this hour of long-wished-for reunion ?" "Oh, he calls me a child!" murmured Elizabeth.

"I am nothing but a child to him!" And she pressed her hands on her mouth in order to repress her cry of anger and anguish, and to prevent them from hearing her teeth, which were chattering as though she were in a chill.
With irresistible force Thomas Seymour drew Catharine into his arms.
"Avoid me no longer," said he, in tender entreaty.

"The hour has come which is finally to determine our destiny! The king is at the point of death, and my Catharine will at length be free--free to follow her own heart.

At this hour I remind you of your oath! Do you remember still that day when you referred me to this hour?
Do you still know, Catharine, how you vowed to be my wife and to receive me as the lord of your future?
Oh, my beloved, that crown which weighed down your head will soon be taken away.