"You are sick, Catharine," said she. "This good fortune
has taken you by surprise, and your overstrained nerves now depict
before you all sorts of frightful forms. That is all."
"No, no, Jane; these thoughts have ever been with me. They have
attended me ever since the king selected me for his wife."
"And why, then, did you not refuse him?" asked Lady Jane. "Why did
you not say 'no' to the king's suit?"
"Why did I not do it, ask you? Ah, Jane, are you such a stranger at
this court as not to know, then, that one must either fulfil the
king's behests or die? My God, they envy me! They call me the
greatest and most potent woman of England. They know not that I am
poorer and more powerless than the beggar of the street, who at
least has the power to refuse whom she will. I could not refuse. I
must either die or accept the royal hand which was extended to me;
and I would not die yet, I have still so many claims on life, and it
has hitherto made good so few of them! Ah, my poor, hapless
existence! what has it been, but an endless chain of renunciations
and deprivations, of leafless flowers and dissolving views? It is
true, I have never learned to know what is usually called
misfortune. But is there a greater misfortune than not to be happy;
than to sigh through a life without wish or hope; to wear away the
endless, weary days of an existence without delight, yet surrounded
with luxury and splendor?"
"You were not unfortunate, and yet you are an orphan, fatherless and
motherless?"
"I lost my mother so early that I scarcely knew her.
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