Three veiled female
figures entered and bowed reverentially.
"Ah," whispered the king, with a cruel smile, as he sank back again
into his chair, "they are the three Fates that spin the Howards'
thread of life, and will now, it is to be hoped, break it off. I
will furnish them with the scissors for it; and if they are not
sharp enough, I will, with my own royal hands, help them to break
the thread."
"Sire," said Earl Douglas, as, at a sign from him, the three women
unveiled themselves--"sire, the wife, the daughter, and the mistress
of the Duke of Norfolk have come to accuse him of high treason. The
mother and the sister of the Earl of Surrey are here to charge him
with a crime equally worthy of death."
"Now verily," exclaimed the king, "it must be a grievous and
blasphemous sin which so much exasperates the temper of these noble
women, and makes them deaf to the voice of nature!"
"It is indeed such a sin," said the Duchess of Norfolk, in a solemn
tone; and, approaching a few paces nearer to the king, she
continued: "Sire, I accuse the duke, my divorced husband, of high
treason and disloyalty to his king. He has been so bold as to
appropriate your own royal coat-of-arms; and on his seal and
equipage, and over the entrance of his palace, are displayed the
arms of the kings of England."
"That is true," said the king, who, now that he was certain of the
destruction of the Howards, had regained his calmness and self-
possession, and perfectly reassumed the air of a strict, impartial
judge.
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