THE LADY ARBELL.
After several weary months of languishing, Charles Stewart was saved from the miseries which seemed the natural inheritance of his name by sinking into his grave. His funeral was conducted with the utmost magnificence, though the Earl of Shrewsbury declined to be present at it, and shortly after, the Countess intimated her purpose of returning to Sheffield, bringing with her the little orphan, Lady Arabella Stewart. Orders came that the best presence chamber in the Manor-house should be prepared, the same indeed where Queen Mary had been quartered before the lodge had been built for her use. The Earl was greatly perturbed. "Whom can she intend to bring?" he went about asking. "If it were the Lady Margaret, it were be much as my head were worth to admit her within the same grounds as this Queen."
"There is no love lost between the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law," observed his son Gilbert in a consolatory tone.
"Little good would that do to me, if once it came to the ears of her Grace and the Lord Treasurer that both had been my guests! And if I had to close the gates—though in no other way could I save my life and honour—your mother would never forget it. It would be cast up to me for ever. What think you, daughter Talbot?"
"Mayhap," said Dame Mary, "my lady mother has had a hint to make ready for her Majesty herself, who hath so often spoken of seeing the Queen of Scots, and might think well to take her unawares."
This was a formidable suggestion. "Say you so," cried the poor Earl, with an alarm his eye would never have betrayed had Parma himself been within a march of Sheffield, "then were we fairly spent. I am an impoverished man, eaten out of house and lands as it is, and were the Queen herself to come, I might take at once to the beggar's bowl."
"But think of the honour, good my lord," cried Mary. "Think of all Hallamshire coming to do her homage. Oh, how I should laugh to hear the Mayor stumbling over his address."
"Laugh, ay," growled the Earl; "and how will you laugh when there is not a deer left in the park, nor an ox in the stalls?"
"Nay, my Lord," interposed Gilbert, "there is no fear of her Majesty's coming. That post from M. de la Mauvissiere reported her at Greenwich only five days back, and it would take her Majesty a far longer time to make her progress than yonder fellow, who will tell you himself that she had no thoughts of moving."
"That might only be a feint to be the more sudden with us," said his wife, actuated in part by the diversion of alarming her father-in-law, and in part really fired by the hope of such an effectual enlivenment of the dulness of Sheffield.