She had little in England to cheer her. Not only were her husband's affairs becoming a nightmare to her, but the looks of hatred which she encountered as she went abroad in her capital, and the vile calumnies which her enemies were not ashamed to publish and to scatter broadcast among her people were the beginning of a martyrdom such as only a woman can know. Added to all this was the growing conviction that her power was insufficient to protect those who had no other protection. It must have wrung her heart (though she knew it to be necessary) to see her mother, who had come to England to be at peace, deprived of half her allowance, and later reduced to such poverty as forced her to lessen her establishment and to sell her jewels. She feared increasingly that she would be obliged to send Rosetti away, and she felt bitterly the scant respect shown to him when, in the cold of the small hours of a November morning, he was roused to witness the searching of his house for proofs of his diplomatic status. It did not make it easier to her that the leading spirit in this matter, as in a general search of the houses of Catholics which took place about this time, was Sir Henry Vane, who owed to her favour his promotion to the position of Secretary of State. She was learning some early lessons in the world's ingratitude. She knew that even her personal servants, such as the Capuchin Fathers, were threatened, and that the English Catholics, who had long looked to her "as the eyes of a handmaiden look to her mistress," were finding her help of no avail. Most poignant of all was the knowledge that the strong arm which had upheld her for so long was failing, and that her husband, with all his love, was obliged to leave her naked to her enemies. She was yet unpractised in suffering, and it is no wonder that, despite her high spirit, her misery was apparent to all.