One of her anxieties had been to arrange suitable marriages for her children, and it was a great joy to her when her husband’s closest friend, the Duke of Devonshire, proposed that his son should marry her eldest daughter. When this marriage was decided on, Lady Elizabeth was only fourteen and Lord Cavendish not sixteen. Lady Russell had to go to London to make the necessary arrangements, and felt it right to go more into society, though she said that going to parties was hard for one with a heavy and weary mind. The marriage was delayed by the bride having an attack of measles, and when it did take place, the young couple only spent three weeks together under Lady Russell’s care, and then Lord Cavendish was sent to finish his education by travelling on the continent for two years. A few years later Lady Russell married her younger daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of Rutland, the best match in England. When her son was only fifteen, a seat in Parliament was offered her for him, but she refused because she thought him too young. She had, however, already arranged a marriage for him to a girl in whose education she took the deepest interest. He was married when he was fifteen, but his wife stayed at home with her mother and he went to Oxford for a year’s study, during which his mother often visited him. At seventeen he was sent to travel abroad, as Lady Russell believed that to “live well in the world, it is for certain necessary to know the world well.” During his travels he caused her some anxiety for he took to gambling, and lost so much money that when he came home, she had to ask his grandfather for money to pay his debts. Shortly afterwards his grandfather died, and he became Duke of Bedford. Now it seemed as if Lady Russell’s anxieties were over, since her three children were all happily married, but sorrow followed her to the last. Her son, in the fulness of life and health, was seized with smallpox, the haunting terror of those days before vaccination was discovered. His wife and children had to fly from the infection, and only his mother, with her never-failing courage, stayed to soothe his last moments. Shortly afterwards her younger daughter, the Duchess of Rutland, died. Once again a demand was made on Lady Russell’s courage. Her only remaining daughter, the Duchess of Devonshire, had just given birth to a child; it was feared that, if she heard of the death of her sister, the shock might be fatal; so her mother stayed with her and did not let her learn the truth, telling her that she had that day seen her sister out of bed, by which she really meant that she had seen her in her coffin.