"Even queens ask mercy from Heaven," she said in a low, steely tone, tense with vibrating passion. "It may be, on a future day your Majesty would not be sorry to have granted some."

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'Now that speech is more like to the Mistress Anne Boleyn than your former ones," returned the other, unmoved. Again the ladies laughed, a little louder this time, and one or two whispers flew nimbly among them.

"I am what your court makes me," the girl cried in sudden outbreak, then as sharply checked herself. Not a look among the ladies was lost to her though her eyes never glanced that way. She was breathing hard, her lips set to keep them from trembling, her hands gripped fiercely under her long pointed sleeves. Every nerve in her was tingling, every pulse throbbed with shame and rage and defeat, yet she stood outwardly at ease, a slow smile curving her lips.

"I thank your Majesty for your great kindness to me. I shall never forget your Grace's pity on my dis

tress."

Her dark eyes were leashed lightning. Then she bowed low and walked slowly out of the room, her head high like a flower on its slender stalk of a neck.

Through the long halls and up the stairs she made her way with an insolent, flaunting grace for any eyes that might be spying, but when she gained her room and drew the bolt across the door, her nervous strength ebbed like a racing tide and she sunk on her knees beside the window seat and buried her face in the cushions.

B

CHAPTER II

A BROKEN BETROTHAL

ITTER anger at the queen, at the cardinal, at Carewe, the informer, wrung her like a physical anguish and lent venom to the loss of Percy and the defeat of their hopes. Just one word from the queen -one little word! And she would not say it! She had been glad to deny her, to taunt her. Even in that tumultuous instant Anne wondered whether the queen was aware of her own gladness. Catherine seemed to her so self-righteous, so smugly assured of her own purity of motive, that no such disturbing selfknowledge could reach her. Why should such as she have the power of life and death, the girl's wild rebellion questioned. It was all unfair, unjust, iniquitous, this scheme of life! Chivalry and justice and mercy were only words of mocking lips. There was no reality but power.

Power! She whispered it to herself chokingly. Oh, for the power of ruling her own life, of riding out with her lover forth to his country home, far from all interference and tyranny! Oh, for the power to dash aside these arrogant men and women, or to wreak on them onehundredth of the bitterness that she was suffering now! Oh, to make them feel as she felt, to foil their hopes, crash down their plans and stab their pride as they had stabbed hers! The memory of the scene that had just been enacted stung her like a hundred tongues of fire.

She writhed under the memory, her whole body hot and angry. .. Power! It was the desire of all the world. Money and strength and beauty and intellect were only of worth for its acquirement.

Poor Anne's tears were fast and furious as the realization of her own helplessness swept over her. What could be done? Her father, Sir Thomas Boleyn, was in excellent favor at court but she knew his affable selfishness too well to dream that he would take one step for her against the cardinal. Her brother George adored her but he had no influence to exert and she herself had only her youth and bright eyes and gay spirits, and though these had won Percy they were powerless to destroy the barriers raised between them.

Oh, Percy, Percy! How merrily they had laughed together in the garden two nights ago, how lightly they had prophesied of that golden future waiting them, how they had dreamed and talked and kissed! What a night it had been-starry and sweet with spring, with a crescent moon, high over their shoulders, etching in silver the rosebuds about them. . . . Even then Carewe must have been lurking in the shadow of those rosebushes, playing the spy.

It was a happy, happy heart that she had carried up to bed with her and now she pressed her hands against her aching side. It was all too horrible for belief. And she was only a helpless girl of nineteen, unfriended and alone. The slow moments dragged by, each with its weight of misery, its sting of reminder. Unheeded, a little black spaniel, subdued by this strange turbulence, had crept closer and closer to her on the window seat, watching her with anxious, puzzled eyes. At last with a worried whine, he put his head down by hers and sent his rough little grater of a tongue against her wet cheek.

Anne started, then her arms went round him, and her tears fell with fresh violence.

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Oh, Robin, Robin - if men had but such hearts as thine

But comforted a little by that dumb sympathy, she sat up and put back the loosened hair from her hot face. The note she had been reading in mass had fallen from her dress to the floor and she smoothed it out and read it again.

It was a boy's scrawl, incoherent, distraught, sent in haste by Henry Percy to announce the arrival of his father whom the cardinal had summoned. Percy was both dazed and fearful. He begged Anne to do what she could; he was obliged to keep his quarters in the cardinal's household.

Percy loved her-loved her to folly. She put her wits sharply together over that. It might yet enable him to strike some blow for their happiness or it might keep him true and waiting till times should be more favoring. Or even, so swiftly did every instinct in her rise to hope, it might be possible for him to soften his father's heart. The old earl was mighty-mighty enough, perhaps, to assuage, though never to oppose, the cardinal.

She would not yet despair. She had hoped too keenly, rejoiced too deeply, to wrench herself yet from her dream.

How much of this dream had been of Percy and how much of the future Earl of Northumberland her most candid moment could scarcely have told. Percy's good looks and merry bearing, his gay laugh and boyish, whole-souled adoration of her, and his reverence toward her girlhood — sweet at this rude, jesting court — had all moved her heart to pride and joy in him, while her haughty young head, full of girlhood's vague, glittering

visions, was not unready for the coronet of Northumberland.

a

These hopes swept away, what remained? Anne stared out unseeingly over the garden, drying its tender April green in a sudden shaft of sun, and she saw herself a small, insignificant mite in this great world in which she had meant to play so magnificent a part. Not the Countess of Northumberland now only a thin little waiting maid to a spiteful queen, at the mercy of every whim of favor. And she had dreamed such dreams!

The seven years she had passed at the French court where she had gone as a childish maid of honor to the Princess Mary on her marriage with King Louis, passed through her mind-years of color and charm and gayety, lilt of music and light hearts and dancing feet. When the old king died and Mary ran off to marry Brandon, the Duke of Suffolk, Anne had remained under the charge of good Queen Claude and had been foremost in favor of all the three hundred girls in her train. As she shot into girlhood, her quick wit delighted in the keenness of the French and her vivid intelligence gained in character in the society of men and women who thought with clearness and talked with charm, and who veiled the dull, daily vices of humanity with such a delightful mantle of cultivation. Anne had been a young belle among her companions; at fourteen she was setting a mode in gowns, inventing dances and winning acclaim by her dancing of them; she played the lute and sang with sweetness. She amused half the women and more than half the men and when at fifteen she was recalled to England she carried a harvest of lamenting verse from susceptible young blades, which drew from her only heart free laughter. She had not learned the meaning of a sigh, and her natural regret at leaving France