I will be your lord, but your slave also. There shall
be in me no thought, no feeling, no wish that is not devoted and
subservient to you. And when I say that I will he your lord, I mean
not thereby that I will not lie forever at your feet and bow my head
in the dust, and say to you: Tread on it, if it seem good to you,
for I am your slave!"
And speaking thus, he dropped on his knees and pressed to her feet
his face, whose glowing and noble expression ravished Catharine's
heart.
She hent down to him, and gently lifting his head, looked with an
indescribable expression of happiness and love deep into his beaming
eyes.
"Do you love me?" asked Seymour, as he put his arm softly around her
slender waist, and arose from his kneeling attitude.
"I love you!" said she, with a firm voice and a happy smile. "I love
you, not as a queen, but as a woman; and if perchance this love
hring us both to the scaffold, well then we shall at least die
together, to meet again there above!"
"No, think not now of dying, Catharine, think of living--of the
beautiful, enchanting future which is beckoning to us. Think of the
days which will soon come, and in which our love will no longer
require secresy or a veil, but when we will manifest it to the whole
world, and can proclaim our happiness from a full glad breast! Oh,
Catharine, let us hope that compassionate and merciful death will
loose at last the unnatural bonds that bind you to that old man.
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