Page:The Queens of England.djvu/329

 ANNE BOLEYN. 289 Anne did not escape the dangerous malady then raging with such fury. It assailed her a month after she arrived in Kent, and for some time her life was in danger, and Henry in the ut- most alarm. He sent his own physician to attend her, and visited her himself soon after her convalescence. It was prob- ably during this visit that the joint letter supposed to be ad- dressed by Anne and Henry to Cardinal Wolsey was writ- ten, but which letter, in a mutilated form, we find given in Sir Henry Ellis' Original Letters as being written by Queen Kath- arine and Henry. Once established in Suffolk House, the open court paid to her by her enamored sovereign and his courtiers, left no doubt on the minds of all those who witnessed it, that her position was of a most compromising nature. Scandal, ever ready to judge by appearances, blazoned forth the imagined culpability of Anne, who must have consoled herself for present humiliation by the anticipation of future dignity and grandeur, when the homage then offered to her would be justified by her elevation to the throne. It was not alone in England that intelligence of her position at court was circulated. The ambassadors from for- eign courts reported it to their own, and Anne's reputation was the sacrifice paid for her premature assumption of the queenly state, to which she hoped soon to have a right. The forebearance of Queen Katharine, under the trials to which she was exposed, was remarkable. It was only on one occasion, as before related, that she is said to have betrayed her consciousness that in Anne Boleyn she had a rival. Playing at at cards with Anne, there was a rule in the game that in dealing the cards the dealer should stop on turning up a king or queen. It happened that Anne had repeatedly turned up a king, which Katharine remarking, exclaimed, "My Lady Anne, you have good luck to stop at a king ; but you are not like others ; you will have all or none." The opportunities afforded to Henry of seeing the object of his passion continually, owing to the contiguity of Suffolk House to York House, only served to increase his affection. Few ever possessed in a more eminent degree the powers of fascination than did Anne Boleyn, and now determined to reap the reward of so many humiliations, it may easily be supposed that she put them all in practice, to secure the heart of her lover, who, impatient to call her his, waited not for their marriage to justify her claim to the honors rendered to royalty, but exacted