She was a free, happy woman, who, in presageful, blissful trepidation, smiled at the future, and said to each minute, "Stay, stay, for thou art so beautiful!" It was a sweet, dreamy happiness, the happiness of that hour.

With glad heart, Catharine would have given her crown for it, could she have prolonged this hour to an eternity.
He was at her side--he of whom John Heywood had said, that he was among her most trustful and trusty friends.

He was there; and even if she did not dare to look at him often, often to speak to him, yet she felt his presence, she perceived the glowing beams of his eyes, which rested on her with consuming fire.

Nobody could observe them.

For the court rode behind them, and before them and around them was naught but Nature breathing and smiling with joy, naught but heaven and God.
She had forgotten however that she was not quite alone, and that while Thomas Seymour rode on her left, on her right was Princess Elizabeth--that young girl of fourteen years--that child, who, however, under the fire of suffering and the storms of adversity, was early forced to precocious bloom, and whose heart, by the tears and experience of her unhappy childhood, had acquired an early ripeness.