Then in the autumn came the hope of a child--to her who loved children so passionately. But all through the waiting time she was overshadowed by a strangely strong presentiment of death. I went to see her sometimes toward the end of it, when she was resting on her sofa in the late evening, and used to leave her listening for her husband's step, on his return from his work, her little weary face already lit up with expectation. The weeks passed, and those who loved her began to be anxious. I went down to Borough Farm in May, and there, just two years after she had sat with us under the hawthorn, I heard the news of her little son's birth, and then ten days later the news of her death. With that death a ray of pure joy was quenched on earth. But Laura Lyttelton was not only youth and delight--she was also embodied love. I have watched her in a crowded room where everybody wanted her, quietly seek out the neglected person there, the stranger, the shy secretary or governess, and make her happy--bring her in--with an art that few noticed, because in her it was nature. When she died she left an enduring mark in the minds of many who have since governed or guided England; but she was mourned also by scores of humble folk, and by disagreeable folk whom only she befriended. Mrs. Lyttelton quotes a letter written by the young wife to her husband: Tell me you love me and always will. Tell me, so that when I dream I may dream of Love, and when I sleep dreamless Love may be holding me in his wings, and when I wake Love may be the spirit in my feet, and when I die Love may be the Angel that takes me home. And in the room of death, when the last silence fell on those gathered there, her sister Margot--by Laura's wish, expressed some time before--read aloud the "will," in which she spoke her inmost heart. Since its publication it belongs to those records of life and feeling which are part of our common inheritance. "She was a flame, beautiful, dancing, ardent," writes the second Mrs. Lyttelton. "The wind of life was too fierce for such a spirit; she could not live in it." I make no apology for dwelling on the life and earthly death of this young creature who was only known to a band--though a large band--of friends during her short years. Throughout social and literary history there have been a few apparitions like hers, which touch with peculiar force, in the hearts of men and women, the old, deep, human notes which "make us men." Youth, beauty, charm, death--they are the great themes with which all art, plastic or literary, tries to conjure. It is given to very few to handle them simply, yet sufficiently; with power, yet without sentimentality. Breathed into Laura's short life, they affected whose who knew her like the finest things in poetry. CHAPTER II LONDON FRIENDS