There is another smaller portrait of her, in her Countess’s coronet and an ermine tippet, which is rather more gracious in expression than the stiff, beruffed, matronly picture above mentioned. Close about her are her husbands—all save Barlow. Most comfortable of these is Sir William Cavendish, sturdy, bearded, and well-liking, in his furred robe and flat cap. Close by, and matching the figure of Arabella Stuart in sheer pathos, is that of the quiet, childless Grace Talbot, whom Fate so soon made the widow of the much-travelled Henry Cavendish. It is that of a dumpy little woman in black, holding in one hand a single pale eglantine—the flower of the Cavendishes. Her reddish-brown hair, her pale lips, a spinet of which the under portion of the open lid is faintly decorated with red-winged cherubs, and a dark green table-cloth, are the only scraps of colour in the sombre scheme. Her psalter, with diamond notation, lies open at the words “Sois moy seigneur ma garde et mon appuy, Car en toy gist toute mon esperance.”

In the same group one finds Burghley, rosy, astute, richly clad, a prince of dignitaries, than whom no statesman ever had richer experience of men and things, of power and place, of sovereigns and the royal caprice, who on the eve of death could still write to his first-born, over the trembling signature of “Your anguished father,” the words “Serve God by serving of the Queen, for all other service is indeed bondage to the devil.”

Very warm and full of life is the portrait of William Cavendish the younger, the Countess’s favourite son. To him in his right as first Earl and ancestor of the Dukes of Devonshire belongs, after his mother, the whole of this glorious gallery, typical of this magnificent house.