"The Howards bow not before the Seymours; and never will
Henry Howard marry a wife that he does not love!"
"Ah, you love her not!" said she, breathless, gnashing her teeth.
"You do not love Lady Margaret; and for this reason must your sister
renounce her love, and give up this man whom she adores. Ah, you
love not this sister of Thomas Seymour? She is not the Geraldine
whom you adore--to whom you dedicate your verses! Well, now, I will
find her out--your Geraldine. I will discover her; and then, woe to
you and to her! You refuse me your hand to lead me to the altar with
Thomas Seymour; well, now, I will one day extend you my hand to
conduct you and your Geraldine to the scaffold!"
And as she saw how the earl startled and turned pale, she continued
with a scornful laugh: "Ah, you shrink, and horror creeps over you!
Does your conscience admonish you that the hero, rigid in virtue,
may yet sometimes make a false step? You thought to hide your
secret, if you enveloped it in the veil of night, like your
Geraldine, who, as you wailingly complain in that poem there, never
shows herself to you without a veil as black as night. Just wait,
wait! I will strike a light for you, before which all your night-
like veils shall he torn in shreds; I will light up the night of
your secret with a torch which will be large enough to set on fire
the fagot piles ahout the stake to which you and your Geraldine are
to go!"
"Ah, now you let me see for the first time your real countenance,"
said Henry Howard, shrugging his shoulders.
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