l to see.

"During her last days," says Mrs Canning, her devoted
friend, "she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner
sat down to the piano. She taught Betty (her little
niece) a little while, and played several slow movements
out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with
a very trembling hand. It was so like the last efforts of
an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender
and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my
poor heart would have burst in the conflict."

And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with
a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the
"choir invisible." Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells
Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link
the world has ever known "between an angel and a woman." As for Sheridan
he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and
to crown his life's drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.

CHAPTER III

THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS

The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the
far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir
George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire. From being a
"threadbare hanger-on" at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be
the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.
Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune. He
was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke
of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl's daughter, the richest heiress
in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and
wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance. And just when his meteoric
career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the
assassin's knife.

His mantle of romance, however, fell on his son and successor, the
second Duke, who was brought up in a Palace nursery, and had for
playmates the children of Charles I.; and who, after a career which in
its dramatic adventure outstripped fiction, ended his turbulent life, if
not, as Pope says,

"In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,"

at least in extreme poverty and suffering in a Yorkshire inn, at Kirby
Moorside. Of all the vast estates he had inherited, his kinsman, Lord
Arran, said: "There is not so much as one farthing towards defr