"She shall pay me for that!" said she softly to herself. "Queen,"
said she aloud, "you are perfectly right; he has deserved this
humiliation; but now, after he is punished, you should lift him up.
Nay, do not shake your beautiful head. Do it for your own sake,
queen; do it from prudence. Earl Surrey, with his father, is the
head of a powerful party, whom this humiliation of the Howards fills
with a still more burning hate against the Seymours, and who will,
in time to come, take a bloody revenge for it."
"Ah, you frighten me!" said the queen, who had now become serious.
Lady Jane continued: "I saw how the Duke of Norfolk bit his lips, as
his son had to yield to Seymour; I heard how one, here and there,
muttered low curses and vows of vengeance against the Seymours."
"Who did that? Who dared to do it?" exclaimed Catharine, springing
up impetuously from her arm-chair. "Who at this court is so
audacious as to wish to injure those whom the queen loves? Name him
to me, Jane; I will know his name! I will know it, that I may accuse
him to the king. For the king does not want that these noble
Seymours should give way to the Howards; he does not want that the
nobler, the better, and more glorious, should bow before these
quarrelsome, domineering papists. The king loves the noble Seymours,
and his powerful arm will protect them against all their enemies."
"And, without doubt, your majesty will assist him in it?" said Jane,
smiling.
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