It was now the autumn of the year 1574. The Shrewsburys had for the time being come triumphantly out of official complications, and despite their grave responsibilities lived as comfortably as might be, though they were often separated, because the wife, at any rate, had other duties besides that of gaolership. What social life was permitted to them by the restraint entailed by this charge could obviously be enjoyed only by the Countess, and even she must have found it difficult to meet her cronies, get her children married and provided for, and keep a firm hand on domestic expenditure at the various houses she owned. The guarding of Mary of Scotland certainly had its interesting, romantic side, and this to some extent was a set-off against the greyer side of the business and its financial disadvantages. Just now the chances of Mary were at their lowest. Bothwell was dying in exile,^[25] the Duke of Norfolk had shed his blood vainly for her, Charles Darnley, “The Young Fool,” as Mr. Lang most justly calls him, though dead, with all his vanity, treachery, and vice, could still harm her cause, more latterly perhaps through the popular stigma which attached to her than by the hatred of his relatives, the family of Lennox. His family, sorely chastened by Elizabeth for his marriage with Mary, was, since his death, held in less odium at the English Court, though it did not suit the Queen’s gracious meanness to raise it out of poverty. Elizabeth and Darnley’s mother, poor soul—Countess of Lennox, née the Lady Margaret Douglas—had buried the hatchet after the boy’s death. For the benefit of those who forget her story—or ignore it—a word as to this lady:—