oss of
her pre-eminence as parent to the heir-male.

However, the grief of those times was apt to expend itself quickly, and
when little George's coffin, smothered under heraldic devices and
funeral escutcheons, had been bestowed in the family vault, Dame Mary
soon revived enough to take a warm interest in the lords who were next
afterwards sent down to hold conferences with the captive; and her
criticism of the fashion of their ruffs and doublets was as animated as
ever. Another grief, however, soon fell upon the family. Lady Lennox's
ailments proved to be no such trifles as her sisters and sisters-in-law
had been pleased to suppose, and before the year was out, she had
passed away from all her ambitious hopes, leaving a little daughter.
The Earl took a brief leave of absence to visit his lady in her
affliction at Chatsworth, and to stand godfather to the motherless
infant.

"She will soon be fatherless, too," said Richard Talbot on his return
to Bridgefield, after attending his lord on this expedition. "My young
Lord Lennox, poor youth, is far gone in the wasting sickness, as well
as distraught with grief, and he could scarcely stand to receive my
Lord."

"Our poor lady!" said Susan, "it pities me to think what hopes she had
fixed upon that young couple whom she had mated together."

"I doubt me whether her hopes be ended now," quoth Richard. "What
think you she hath fixed on as the name of the poor puling babe yonder?
They have called her Arbel or Arabella."

"Arabella, say you? I never heard such a name. It is scarce
Christian. Is it out of a romaunt?"

"Better that it were. It is out of a pedigree. They have got the
whole genealogy of the house of Lennox blazoned fair, with crowns and
coronets and coats of arms hung up in the hall at Chatsworth, going up
on the one hand through Sir AEneas of Troy, and on the other hand
through Woden to Adam and Eve! Pass for all before the Stewart line
became Kings of Scots! Well, it seems that these Lennox Stewarts
sprang from one Walter, who was son to King Robert II., and that the
mother of this same Walter was called Anhild, or as the Scots here call
it Annaple, but the scholars have made it into Arabella, and so my
young lady is to be called. They say it was a special fancy of the
young Countess's."

"So I should guess. My lady would fill her head with such thoughts,
and of this poor youth being next of kin to the young Scottish king,
and to our own Queen