Here, according
to the etiquette of the time, she must dismiss her court, and only
the two bishops and her ladies of honor were permitted to accompany
the queen into the drawing-room. But farther than this chamber even
the bishops themselves might not follow her. The king himself had
written down the order for the day, and he who swerved from this
order in the most insignificant point would have been proclaimed
guilty of high treason, and perhaps have been led out to death.
Catharine, therefore, turned with a languid smile to the two high
ecclesiastics, and requested them to await here her summons. Then
beckoning to her ladies of honor, she withdrew into her boudoir.
The two bishops remained by themselves in the drawing-room. The
circumstance of their being alone seemed to impress them both alike
and unpleasantly; for a dark scowl gathered on the brows of both,
and they withdrew, as if at a concerted signal, to the opposite
sides of the spacious apartment.
A long pause ensued. Nothing was heard save the regular ticking of a
large clock of rare workmanship which stood over the fireplace, and
from the street afar off, the rejoicing of the people, who surged
toward the palace like a roaring sea.
Gardiner had stepped to the window, and was looking up with his
peculiar dark smile at the clouds which, driven by the tempest, were
sweeping across the heavens.
Cranmer stood by the wall on the opposite side, and sunk in sad
thoughts, was contemplating a large portrait of Henry the Eighth,
the masterly production of Holbein.
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