“Such words, earlier uttered, might have effected my cure. But they are too late now. Let me speak to you while strength is left me, and may Heaven give you grace to profit by my counsel. That I owe my death to your expressed wishes is, I fear, too true.”
“Oh! Catherine, I beseech you to dismiss these cruel and unjust suspicions!”
“I cannot dismiss them. They have grown to conviction. Listen to me, Seymour. You know how deeply I have loved you, and what sacrifices I have made for you. You know that I have ever been a faithful and obedient wife.”
“You have!—you have!” he exclaimed.
“I will not reproach you. I will not recall your harsh usage—your neglect—almost abandonment. I refer to your treatment of me only to say that I forgive you. But my latest words to you must be words of warning. I know you are conspiring against the state—that you meditate some desperate attempt against the government—and that by plunging the kingdom into civil war you hope to overthrow and supplant your brother. Be warned by me, Seymour. If you persist in these criminal designs, you will come to a terrible and bloody ending. Be warned, I say, and abandon them while there is yet time. Devote yourself to Heaven, and strive by penitence and prayer to expiate your many and deep offences! Obey no longer the impulses of pride and ambition, which will lead you to certain destruction, but give yourself up to holy meditation. Will you do this?”
“I can make no such promise, Catherine. If I did, I might not keep it.”
“Alas! alas! then you are lost. Yet let me try to move you.”
“You will try in vain,” he rejoined. “My purpose is fixed.”
“And what do you hope to gain, Seymour?”
“The second place in the kingdom. Perchance the first.”
“You deceive yourself,” she rejoined, with a solemn and almost prophetic look. “Your efforts will only conduct you to the scaffold. Bethink you of my warning when you are brought thither.”
“I am not to be deterred from my course by idle fancies,” he rejoined. “I know the risk I run, and am not appalled by it. I learned to consider life uncertain in the days of your former husband, Catherine. What fate may have in store for me I cannot tell. It may be increase of power—or it may be the headsman’s axe. But my resolution is taken. I go on.”
“Heaven pardon you! and soften your heart!” murmured Catherine. “But do not refuse my dying request, Seymour. ‘Tis the last I shall ever make to you.”
“What is it?” he rejoined.
“Abandon all thoughts of Elizabeth. Seek not her hand. Promise me this!—oh! promise it to me.”
But Seymour was silent, and averted his head.
“Will you not promise it?” she cried, imploringly.
“I cannot,” he replied.
The poor queen fell backwards, and for some moments remained silent.
“Have you any further injunctions for me, Catherine?” inquired Seymour.
“Only this,” she replied. “Be kind to the little innocent I have so lately brought into the world. I do not think it will live long to trouble you.”
“While I am spared to watch over it, it shall never want a father’s love. But you indulge in sad forebodings, Catherine, none of which, I trust, will be realized. Have a better heart in regard to yourself. You are not so dangerously ill as you suppose.”
“All is well-nigh over with me, Seymour,” she groaned. “Give me your hand. Mine has been a wretched life, and I am not sorry it draws to a close. Vainly have I looked for happiness in the married state—in each instance I have been disappointed, but in none so deeply and so woefully as in the last. The disappointment has been all the more bitter because I expected so much. Who would believe that one so richly graced in mind and body as you, Seymour, could be so faithless, so cruel? Even Henry’s tyranny has been less terrible than yours.”
“What have I done, Catherine?” cried Seymour, distractedly. “What have I done?”
“You have killed me,” she replied, raising herself by a last effort, and fixing her eyes upon him, “if not by poison, by unkindness.”