"Of a broken heart!" replied the nurse coldly, and with the same icy composure which had marked her conduct, she led her royal visitor to the door, without speaking another word. Had she explained that Ellen Craigh and the Countess of Bothwell were the same person, regret for the evil she had wrought might have checked Mary in her career of folly. But the death of the deserted wife was kept a secret among the few faithful followers who had accompanied her in her wild expedition to Mary's court, and the nurse, on whose bosom she had yielded up her life. While the courts of Scotland were agitated with the divorce of Bothwell, the haughty man little knew that his gentle wife had ceased to feel his cruelty. * * * * * Transcriber's Notes: Unusual spellings retained, but obvious spelling and punctuation errors were fixed. Contraction variants retained, notably in "Jack Downing's Visit to Portland," as features of narrator dialect. In several stories, notably "Courtship" and "Descriptions of the Divine Being," the use of quotation marks was inconsistent, and has been standardized. This required the addition of quotation marks in several places. Where the non-use of quotation marks was consistent within a story, no changes were made. Contents: Preface is on P. iii, not "7"(original); both "M--" in Contents and "M***" on poem heading retained; "Deserted Wife" P. 272 is correct--retained original placement above "Portland as it Was" in Contents (author name starts with "S"). P. 13, "sum of $1,363,589,69,--" Number appears incomplete, but is consistent with a separate publication of this article ["A Modest Estimate of Our Own Country," in "The Americans at home; or Byeways, backwoods, and prairies, ed. by the author of 'Sam Slick'," London: Hurse and Blackett Publishers, 1854] which reads (on P. 125) "sum of 1,363,589,69 dollars,--" P. 34, "disapprobation run" changed to "disapprobation ran." P. 41, "guana" retained. Less-used alternate spelling for "iguana." P. 91, "Illiad" retained. Consistent with quote reference that follows. P. 115, "fourth-coming" changed to "forth-coming." P. 259, "full muturity" changed to "full maturity." P. 282, "died her cheek" changed to "died from her cheek." Hyphen variants retained when consistent within story. Otherwise corrected to majority use in story. Variants retained due to different stories or lack of majority in same story: birth-day and birthday, broad-side and broadside, companion-way and companionway, grave-yard and graveyard, juxta-position and juxtaposition, look-out and lookout, noon-day and noonday, over-flowing and overflowing, rain-bow and rainbow, re-appeared and reappeared, sky-sail and skysail, stair-way and stairway, steam-boats and steamboats, sun-light and sunlight. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Portland Sketch Book, by Various