She saw how
he turned pale when, not Queen Catharine, but his brother, Earl
Hertford, was appointed regent during Edward's minority; she saw the
sinister, almost angry look which he threw at the queen; and with a
cruel smile she murmured:
"I am revenged! He loves her no longer!"
John Heywood, who was standing behind the queen's throne, had also
observed the look of Thomas Seymour, yet not like Elizabeth, with a
rejoicing, but with a sorrowful heart, and he dropped his head upon
his breast and murmured: "Poor Catharine! He will hate her, and she
will be very unhappy."
But she was still happy. Her eye beamed with pure delight when she
perceived that her lover was, by the king's will, appointed High
Admiral of England and guardian of the young king. She thought not
of herself, but only of him, of her lover; and it filled her with
the proudest satisfaction to see him invested with places of such
high honor and dignity.
Poor Catharine! Her eye did not see the sullen cloud which still
rested on the brow of her beloved. She was so happy and so innocent,
and so little ambitious! For her this only was happiness, to be her
lover's, to be the wife of Thomas Seymour.
And this happiness was to be hers. Thirty days after the death of
King Henry the Eighth she became the wife of the high admiral,
Thomas Seymour, Earl of Sudley. Archbishop Cranmer solemnized their
union in the chapel at Whitehall, and the lord protector, now Duke
of Somerset, formerly Earl of Hertford, the brother of Thomas
Seymour, was the witness of this marriage, which was, however, still
kept a secret, and of which there were to be no other witnesses.
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