When the tapestry came back rejected the blue eyes grew dimmer, and her cheek paled with the heart-sickness of hope deferred, or rather of despair, and it was rumored that the daughter of the House of Stuart had met her doom in madness. Sorriest of all the history is that the youthful husband forgot his too-loving wife. The letters full of tenderness reached the trifler at European courts, and lay unanswered. The low-browed villain Wood, who had her in charge, knew the death of his captive would please King James and the courtiers who lived on his smiles. His small mind lent itself to all sorts of petty annoyances and means to make imprisonment unwholesome. She must not walk, nor have her own attendants, nor food and dress befitting the near kinswoman of queens, though the offended monarch generously had the ceiling of her room "mended to keep out wind and rain."
The forlorn lady passed from deep melancholy to spasms that touched her brain. Even in such pitiful condition she was closely watched and guarded by the nervous coward, who pretended to believe there was an Arabella plot, with Raleigh at its head, secreted in the Tower.
For a year the insane Countess lived, gentle and harmless, chattering like a little child. Her one amusement was singing songs of love and longing, learned in happy days, with the lute, whose trembling strings made the saddest strains ear ever heard. The heart-breaking music softened even her jailer; he grew compassionate, and she wandered at will through the doleful halls and the garden. But the wan face never brightened; she faded slowly, drooped, and died.
In the chill midnight of autumn her wornout body was brought by the black-flowing river to Westminster Abbey, in a miserable coffin without a plate, and laid away in that sanctuary with no ceremony, not even a prayer. "For," says a loyal courtier, "to have had a great funeral for one dying out of favor with the King would reflect on the King's honor."
After a troubled life she sleeps well in the tomb of her ill-starred family, close beside the dust of her grandmother, Margaret Douglas. Her coffin lies across and flattens the leaden casket which holds the headless corpse of her great-aunt Mary, unhappy Queen of Scots. Neither name nor date is above her breast, and the skull and bones were plainly seen below the rotten wood in 1868 (a ghastly sight!) when the vaults were searched for the remains of James I.
Her persecutor rests near his victim. The enemies are at one now. The strange peace of death which ends all feuds has brought them together, and their restless hearts lie still, awaiting the coming of the Angel of the Resurrection.
The period of which I write is sometimes called the good old times. I call it the bad old times.