Lady Saint Lo was now become extremely wealthy, with her own fortune and the added wealth of three husbands deceased, but she was far from content. She was building incessantly, both terrestrial habitations and airy castles, and hungered both for more wealth and greater social distinction. For some while she cast about for another partner, and at length found a suitable quarry in George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, another widower with a grown-up family. Him she married, and from that time he knew but little peace. True, the first year or so of their union seems to have been comparatively mild, but the storms that ensued were beyond anything. The Earl was for nineteen years the custodian of Mary, Queen of Scots, and she seems to have aroused the jealousy of the Countess, for the unfortunate Talbot was surrounded with his wife’s spies, and the espions whom the English Queen’s suspicious nature also set around him made his life a misery. Poor Talbot! two queens and a wife--and such a wife--to serve, guard, and pacify. How wretched he must have been in that gorgeous palace of ‘Chattysworth,’ as the old-time spelling had it! His wife embittered his own sons against him, while her family of Cavendishes hated him cordially, and, as he had foolishly made over his property to her upon his marriage, he lived practically upon sufferance. Queen Elizabeth, in whose service he continually expressed the greatest loyalty, took the part of his wife, and ordered him to be content with an allowance of 500_l._ per annum which the Countess vouchsafed him--‘to my perpetual infamy and great dishonour,’ as he wrote, ‘thus to be ruled and overranne by my wief, so bad and wicked a woman. But your Majesty shall see that I will observe your commandments, though no curse or plage on earth colde be more grievous to me.’ Poor fellow! his faults were few, probably the greatest of them being a weak amiability which led him to be reconciled time and again to his wife, who used every reconciliation as a means to the end of entreating him even more shamefully than before. He died at length, wearied out with lawsuits, the ingratitude of his own children, and the bitter animosity of his wife. She survived him for many years, and died, aged eighty-eight, in the winter of 1607, during a hard frost which put a stop to the building works which she was carrying on here and there over all her possessions. She was passionately fond of bricks and mortar, or else was mindful of a prophecy that she should live so long as she continued building. That prophecy was fulfilled by the frost, which rendered her workmen idle.