The tears shed for Sydney, by those nearest and dearest to him, were but too soon dried. His widow was consoled by Essex, and his Stella, by her old lover Mountjoy, who returned from Ireland, flushed with victory and honours, and cast himself again at her feet. Their secret intercourse remained, for several years, undiscovered. Lady Rich, who was tenderly attached to her brother, was guarded in her conduct, fearing equally the loss of his esteem, and the renewal of those hostile feelings which had already caused one duel between Essex and Mountjoy. She had also children; and as all, without exception, lived to be distinguished men and virtuous women, we may give her credit for some attention to their education,--some compunctious visitings of nature on their account. During her brother's imprisonment, she made the most strenuous, the most persevering efforts to save his life: she besieged Elizabeth with the richest presents, the most eloquent letters of supplication;--she waylaid her at the door of her chamber, till commanded to remain a prisoner in her own house;--she bribed, or otherwise won, all whom she thought could plead his cause;--and when these were of no avail, and Essex perished, she seems, in her despair, to have thrown off all restraint--and at length, fled from the house of her husband. In 1605 she was legally divorced from Lord Rich; and soon after married Mountjoy, then Earl of Devonshire. The marriage of a divorced wife in the lifetime of her first husband, was in those days a thing almost unprecedented in the English court, and caused the most violent outcry and scandal. Laud (the archbishop, then chaplain to the Earl of Devonshire,) incurred the censure of the Church for uniting the lovers, and ever after fasted on the anniversary of this fatal marriage. The Earl, one of the most admirable and distinguished men of that chivalrous age, who "felt a stain as a wound," found it impossible to endure the infamy brought on himself and the woman he loved: he died about a year after: "the griefe," says a contemporary, "of this unhappie love brought him to his end."[108] His unfortunate Countess lingered but a short time after him, and died in a miserable obscurity.--Such is the history of Sydney's STELLA. Three of her sons became English earls; the eldest, Earl of Warwick; the second, Earl of Holland; and the third (her son by Mountjoy) Earl of Newport. The earldoms of Warwick and Holland were held by her lineal descendants, till the death of that young Lord Warwick, whose mother married Addison. FOOTNOTES: [102] Sonnet 31. [103] Sonnet 41. [104] Sonnet 48. [105] Sonnet 54.