The latter part of her long and busy life she occupied almost entirely in building, and it is marvellous what an amount of real work—hard figures and dry details—she got through; for it is a fact, abundantly evidenced by the original accounts, remaining to this day, that not a penny was expended on her buildings, and not a detail added or taken away, without her special attention and personal supervision. Building was a passion with her, and she indulged it wisely and well, sparing neither time, nor trouble, nor outlay, to secure everything being done in the most admirable manner. It is said, and it is so recorded by Walpole, that the countess had once been told by a gipsy fortune-teller that she would never die so long as she continued building, and she so implicitly believed this, that she never ceased planning and contriving and adding to her erections; and it is said that at last she died in a hard frost, which totally prevented the workmen from continuing their labours, and so caused an unavoidable suspension of her works. Surely the fortune-teller here was a “wise woman” in more senses than one; for it was wise and cunning in her to instil such a belief into the countess’s mind, and thus insure a continuance of the works by which so many workmen and their families gained a livelihood, and by which later generations would also benefit. [Illustration: _The Old Hall at Hardwick._] Besides Hardwick, Chatsworth (for which a good part of the old Hall at Hardwick was, at a later period, removed), Oldcotes, and other places, the countess founded and built the Devonshire Almshouses at Derby, and did many other good and noble works. She died, full of years and full of honours and riches, on the 23rd of February, 1607, and was buried in All Saints’ Church, Derby, under a stately tomb which she had erected during her lifetime, and on which a long Latin inscription is to be seen. Of the countess—the “Bess of Hardwick,” who was one of the greatest of the subjects of that other “Bess” who sat on the throne of England—portraits are still preserved at Hardwick, and show that she must have been, as Dugdale says of her, “faire and beautiful.” Whatever faults of temper or of disposition she had—and she is said to have had plenty of both—she had good qualities which, perhaps, outbalanced them; and she, at all events, founded one of the most brilliant houses—that of Cavendish—which this nation has ever produced.