Fresh from listening to this latest sensational triumph of her husband in Westminster Hall, she wrote:—­

“It is impossible to convey to you the delight, the astonishment, the admiration he has excited in the breasts of every class of people.  Every party prejudice has been overcome by this display of genius, eloquence and goodness....  What my feelings must be, you can only imagine.  To tell you the truth, it is with some difficulty that I can ‘let down my mind,’ as Mr Burke said afterwards, to talk or think on any other subject.  But pleasure too exquisite becomes pain; and I am at this moment suffering from the delightful anxieties of last week.”

But Mrs Sheridan’s day of happiness and triumph was soon to draw near to its close.  She saw her husband climb to the dizziest pinnacle of fame, and she watched with pain his brilliance dimmed, and his marvellous intellect clouded by excessive drinking, before the fatal seeds of consumption, which had already carried off her dearly-loved sister, began to show themselves in her.  Her illness was as swift as it was, happily, painless.  She simply drooped and faded and died, tenderly watched over to the last by her husband with a silent anguish that was pitiful to see.

“During her last days,” says Mrs Canning, her devoted friend, “she read sometimes to herself, and after dinner sat down to the piano.  She taught Betty (her little niece) a little while, and played several slow movements out of her own head, with her usual expression, but with a very trembling hand.  It was so like the last efforts of an expiring genius, and brought such a train of tender and melancholy ideas to my imagination, that I thought my poor heart would have burst in the conflict.”

And one June day, when the world she had loved so well was flooded with a glory of sunlight, her beautiful spirit sped silently away to join the “choir invisible.”  Nine days later she was laid to rest in Wells Cathedral, thousands flocking to pay farewell homage to the closest link the world has ever known “between an angel and a woman.”  As for Sheridan he survived his grief twenty-four years, to end his days in poverty, and to crown his life’s drama with a stately funeral in Westminster Abbey.

CHAPTER III

THE ROMANCE OF THE VILLIERS

The Villiers have had a liberal share of romance, ever since the far-away days, three centuries and more ago, when the fourth son of Sir George opened his eyes at Brookesby, in Leicestershire.  From being a “threadbare hanger-on” at Court this son of an obscure knight rose to be the boon companion of two kings and the lover of a Queen of France.  Honours and riches were showered on this spoiled child of fortune.  He was created, in rapid succession, Viscount and Marquis, and finally Duke of Buckingham; he won for bride an Earl’s daughter, the richest heiress in the land; and for some years dazzled the world by his splendours and wealth as he alienated it by his arrogance.  And just when his meteoric career had reached its zenith, his life was closed in tragedy by the assassin’s knife.