written down the order for the day, and he who swerved from this
order in the most insignificant point would have been proclaimed
guilty of high treason, and perhaps have been led out to death.

Catharine, therefore, turned with a languid smile to the two high
ecclesiastics, and requested them to await here her summons. Then
beckoning to her ladies of honor, she withdrew into her boudoir.

The two bishops remained by themselves in the drawing-room. The
circumstance of their being alone seemed to impress them both alike
and unpleasantly; for a dark scowl gathered on the brows of both,
and they withdrew, as if at a concerted signal, to the opposite
sides of the spacious apartment.

A long pause ensued. Nothing was heard save the regular ticking of a
large clock of rare workmanship which stood over the fireplace, and
from the street afar off, the rejoicing of the people, who surged
toward the palace like a roaring sea.

Gardiner had stepped to the window, and was looking up with his
peculiar dark smile at the clouds which, driven by the tempest, were
sweeping across the heavens.

Cranmer stood by the wall on the opposite side, and sunk in sad
thoughts, was contemplating a large portrait of Henry the Eighth,
the masterly production of Holbein. As he gazed on that countenance,
indicative at once of so much dignity and so much ferocity; as he
contemplated those eyes which shone with such gloomy severity, those
lips on which was a smile at once voluptuous and fierce, there came
over him a feeling of deep sympathy with the young woman whom he had