In August the
conspirators were netted, and Mary was arrested at the gate of Tixall
Park, whither Paulet had taken her under pretence of a hunting-party. At
Tixall she was detained till her papers at Chartley had undergone
thorough research. That she was at length taken in her own toils, even
such a dullard as her admirers depict her could not have failed to
understand; that she was no such dastard as to desire or deserve such
defenders, the whole brief course of her remaining life bore consistent
and irrefragable witness.
Her first thought on her return to Chartley was one of loyal gratitude
and womanly sympathy. She cheered the wife of her English secretary, now
under arrest, with promises to answer for her husband to all accusations
brought against him; took her new-born child from the mother's arms, and
in default of clergy baptized it, to Paulet's Puritanic horror, with her
own hands by her own name.
The next or the twin-born impulse of her indomitable nature was, as
usual in all times of danger, one of passionate and high-spirited
defiance on discovering the seizure of her papers. A fortnight afterward
her keys and her money were confiscated, while she, bedridden and unable
to move her hand, could only ply the terrible weapon of her bitter and
fiery tongue. Her secretaries were examined in London, and one of them
gave evidence that she had first heard of the conspiracy by letter from
Babington, of whose design against the life of Elizabeth she thought it
best to take no notice in her reply, though she did not hold herself
bound to reveal it.
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