Two days after our engagement took place I received a very nice letter from Lady Desborough, saying how pleased she was to hear of Percy's choice, and its success. She said a good many kind and complimentary things, to which I did not, even at the time, attach much importance, for I knew well that it was only the fact of her son choosing, greatly against her wishes, an active military life, which made her regard with approval his engagement with myself. However, I did not fret seriously about that; she gave her consent, and that was all that was required, while I had the hearty approval of my own dear parents in my choice. I believed Percy loved me with all his heart, and I certainly did him with all mine. So the time they stopped with us went over very happily and quickly. Nothing was said before they went away about our marriage; indeed, mamma was so very ill, that it was a question which could not be discussed, as of course I could not have left her in the state she was in, and how long she might remain as she was no one could tell. However, it was willed that her stay with us should be even more brief than our worst fears had whispered. Percy and Ada had not left us much more than a month, when papa said at breakfast one morning: "Agnes, I wrote yesterday to Harry to come home; write to-day to Miss Pilgrim, asking her to send Polly home to-morrow." It did not need for me to look in his face; the quiver of his voice told me his meaning: they were to come home to see mamma before she died. What a dreadful shock it was. I had long known mamma must leave us soon, but she had so long been ill, and she changed so gradually, that, until papa spoke that morning, I had never realized that her time was so near at hand. Yet, when I recovered from that terrible fit of crying, I remembered how I could count back from week to week, and see how the change, gradual as it seemed, had yet been strongly marked, and that the last two months had wrought terrible havoc with her little remaining strength. At the beginning of that time she had been up nearly all day, lying on the sofa. As time went on, she got up later and went to bed earlier; at the end of the month, papa had taken to carrying her in, and now, for the last ten days, her visits to the drawing-room had ceased altogether. She was wonderfully calm and patient, and through all those long months of illness, I never heard a murmur or word of complaint pass her lips. Polly arrived the day after I wrote, and was, poor child, in a dreadful state of grief. Harry came the day after: to him the shock was greater than to any of us. He had not seen her fading gradually away as we had, and although from our letters, he knew how ill she was, he had never until he came back completely realized it.