Thus did James contrive even with mercy to mingle tyranny, to deprive apparent clemency of all real lenity, and to display the pitiful frivolity of his nature in the solemn exercise of his holiest and his highest prerogative. There were not one of those, except Markham, whom he reprieved at Winchester, to whom immediate death would not have been pity, compared with the fate for which he reserved them; and yet the country rang with applause even while the spirit of historic truth stamped the act with the infamous brand it deserves. CHAPTER XVI. Such, then, as we have seen in the last chapter, was the termination of the conspiracy in which the name of Arabella Stuart was employed by bad men, for their own purposes, without her own will or consent. But what had in the meantime become of that sweet girl herself, whom we left at the inn at St. Neot's, ill in body and in mind. Several days passed before she recovered entirely, and the learned physicians who had been called from Cambridge to attend upon her, asserted that she had undoubtedly partaken of some poisonous substance. Arabella herself was incredulous, and attributed in her own mind the fit of sickness which had overtaken her, to the care and anxiety which she had previously endured. But the learned doctors assured her that perhaps it might be a fortunate event she had taken this poison, as, under the good management with which she had been treated, it would act as an antidote against the infection of the plague, which in all probability she would otherwise have caught, as the case of Sir Harry West was undoubtedly one of a pestilential character.