m coming under the same roof with
his royal sister-in-law. He was a weakly youth, and his wife's health
failed immediately after her marriage, so that Lady Shrewsbury remained
almost constantly at Chatsworth with her darling.

Gilbert Talbot, who was the chief peacemaker of the family, went to and
fro, wrote letters and did his best, which would have been more
effective but for Mary, his wife, who, no doubt, detailed all the
gossip of Sheffield at Chatsworth, as she certainly amused Sheffield
with stories of her sister Bess as a royal countess full of airs and
humours, and her mother treating her, if not as a queen, at least on
the high road to become one, and how the haughty dame of Shrewsbury ran
willingly to pick up her daughter's kerchief, and stood over the fire
stirring the posset, rather than let it fail to tempt the appetite
which became more dainty by being cossetted.

The difference made between Lady Lennox and her elder sisters was not a
little nettling to Dame Mary Talbot, who held that some consideration
was her due, as the proud mother of the only grandson of the house of
Shrewsbury, little George, who was just able to be put on horseback in
the court, and say he was riding to see "Lady Danmode," and to drink
the health of "Lady Danmode" at his meals.

Alas! the little hope of the Talbots suddenly faded. One evening after
supper a message came down in haste to beg for the aid of Mistress
Susan, who, though much left to the seclusion of Bridgefield in
prosperous days, was always a resource in trouble or difficulty. Little
George, then two and a half years old, had been taken suddenly ill
after a supper on marchpane and plum broth, washed down by Christmas
ale. Convulsions had come on, and the skill of Queen Mary's apothecary
had only gone so far as to bleed him. Susan arrived only just in time
to see the child breathe his last sigh, and to have his mother, wild
with tumultuous clamorous grief, put into her hands for such soothing
and comforting as might be possible, and the good and tender woman did
her best to turn the mother's thoughts to something higher and better
than the bewailing at one moment "her pretty boy," with a sort of
animal sense of bereavement, and the next with lamentations over the
honours to which he would have succeeded. It was of little use to speak
to her of the eternal glories of which he was now secure, for Mary
Talbot's sorrow was chiefly selfish, and was connected with the l