forth that he could observe nothing in the proceedings against her, but that they were resolved to be rid of her, and then her keen eyes turned again to that dreadful jury.

Her uncle drew on the black cap. Anne rose to receive her sentence. Not even those nearest to her could detect the quiver of the features when she heard pronounced that Anne, Queen of England, had been found guilty of high treason, and was to be beheaded or burned at the king's pleasure. Very quietly she asked leave to say a few words.

"I am ready for death my innocence doth not fear it," she said in unfaltering clearness, "but what doth grieve me sadly is that those poor gentlemen, who are innocent of all that is charged to them, should suffer on my account. . . I ask a short time to be prepared for

death."

One of the peers rose uncertainly to his feet and moved towards the door. It was Percy of Northumberland, and Anne, for the first time taking note of his presence there, thought numbly how strange it was, among all this strangeness, that he should be sitting in judgment upon her. Ten years ago, a girl of nineteen, she had cried her heart out for him. Well, she had Wolsey to thank for that, and Catherine, those two old enemies whom she was so shortly to join. . . . At the door Percy turned back on her a strange look. She had met his eyes many times at court, but always between them had been that screen of artificiality; now there was something poignant and awful in his revealing gaze. She had heard that he was ill, slowly dying of some nervous disorder. She gave him a faint smile, and in that moment she remembered what her lips had long forgotten, the first touch of his mouth on hers. .. Well, she was soon

to receive the kisses of another lover, that cold and ultimate possessor, Death.

These thoughts all flashed through her mind like one thought; then she saw that her jailers had resumed their positions at her side to reëscort her to the Tower. Just at the doorway she passed George being brought in for his trial and the eyes of brother and sister met in a swift, deep look. He was erect, smiling, disdainful. He had not one trace of hope now and an insouciant defiance was painted on his debonair features. The jig was up, his smile seemed ironically to say. They had never been so completely united as in that final and speechless second. Anne's heart went out to him in a surge of tenderness and pride. She smiled as she left the room.

D

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE NUMBERED HOURS

EATH! Anne repeated it over and over to herself as she sat at her casement that night overlooking the Thames. She could not sleep, but

a sense of fatigue after the storm of the day had laid hold of her and she felt inert and unwilling to move. Her tired body seemed a cage to her throbbing mind. In the next room slept Mary Wyatt and Helen and Madge and Amy, for she had been granted the company of her own maids now there was no longer the necessity for putting spies about her person.

Death! Anne sat there trying to prepare her mind for that stupendous event, as she had requested time to do, and all the while she was thinking how fantastic and unreal it all was. A night wind from the north was blowing and she heard beneath her the swishing of the little waves against the gray stones of her prison and breathed the warm, languorous smell of reedy river waters. It brought to her mind the remembrance of the days she had spent upon that river, of exquisite green shores where the trees hung breathless over their still reflections and of deep, emerald pools where the silver fish poised in their swift flights. With an impatient effort she wrenched her wayward mind from these futile wanderings to fix it on that thought of death.

She could not realize that thought, but it was coming to her, she repeated, death on a scaffold, for she had

been told that owing to the king's leniency, her sentence would not be the stake. She would be beheaded. She put her hand to her neck as if to assure herself of the fact. There was where the sword would fall. She tried to vizualize the scene. She saw herself mounting the scaffold, she saw the black-clad executioner and the worn and blood-stained block where she must kneel but even such dire images did not make that scene real to her, but it appeared like part of another's life on which she, Anne Boleyn, was gazing.

She thought of the beyond, the unknown bourne to which that final moment on the scaffold would send her journeying. She had always had faith in a hereafter, or rather she had assumed that she had, in that unquestioning and literal acceptance which youth gives to those shadowy affairs of so distant a date. But now death was actually upon her. And after death what? If death should be all! The thought of the absolute cessation of the human spirit roused in her an incredulous and passionate denial. It could not be all! It could not! Of what avail was life, its strivings, its griefs and sufferings, if death ended all, like a huge snuffer over a flickering candle? Did such wrongs as hers descend into the grave with the poor body, to be covered by the earth, unredressed by any higher judgment? Did such dissolute monsters as Henry caper through their satyr lives to sleep in an eternal peace? It could not be! Her desperate need of higher justice compelled its own belief; she felt that life without this ultimate summing up was chaos unthinkable. Surely God would requite her for all she had suffered here . . . would reveal her innocence . . . would confound her enemies . . . her stricken heart dwelt on that thought. At His Throne all would be made clear.

· •

She roused from the passionate comfort of that thought to remind herself that there was yet much to do to prepare herself; she must make ready her soul, and repent of those matters that needed repentance. She tried to turn her thoughts back through her years, and search them with remorseless clearness, but her thoughts evaded her and slipped into straying by-paths of her own. Disconnected visions passed hazily through her mind in fitful waywardness; she saw good Madame Simonette, her governess, crying at the foot of a tree she had rashly scaled; she saw herself trying on her coronation robes and the dazzling white and scarlet of the image that laughed back at her from her glass; she remembered the first touch of her baby's hand on her breast. that memory came the only pang of fear that assailed her. Her baby, Elizabeth! In what measure ye mete it shall be measured unto you again. . . . She heard it as if it had been spoken and she thought of the day she had surprised Henry and Jane — then she thought of the Lady Mary. Aye, she had done wrong there. The girl had driven her to bitterness with her disdainful pipe of the king's mistress," . . . but would she not

66

have done the same?

And with

Would she not have had her own daughter do the same? There was something fine in that haughty and unintimidated Spanish blood to which Anne had yielded secret admiration through her spite — and now a sad and helpless remorse possessed her at the irritation and bitterness she had expended upon the dispossessed little princess, a remorse that was quickened by a terrified foreboding of the retaliation upon her own child. Oh, she had sinned there! But let it not be visited upon Elizabeth, her innocent baby! Let her bear it allsurely, in the agony of this ignoble death she was bearing it all!