Shortly after, Dr. Baly, the queen's physician, was killed by a railway accident, and Dr. Jenner succeeded him. This caused considerable sorrow, but it was followed by an event that plunged the queen and her family into deep grief. The Duchess of Kent had undergone a surgical operation in the beginning of March, from which she did not reap any benefit; but no alarm was felt as to her condition. On the morning of the fifteenth the queen and prince went to inspect the new gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at South Kensington, from which the queen returned alone, leaving the prince to transact some business with the committee. While there, he was suddenly summoned to Buckingham Palace by Sir James Clarke, who had come up from Frogmore to announce some alarming symptoms that had attacked the Duchess of Kent. The prince at once informed the queen, who, without a moment's delay, set out with him and the Princess Alice for Windsor. Her majesty's diary tells the rest: "By eight o'clock we were at Frogmore. Here, Lord James Murray and the ladies received us, and, alas! said it was just the same; but, still, I did not then realize what it was. Albert went up, and when he returned with tears in his eyes, I saw what it was that awaited me.... With a trembling heart I went up the staircase and entered the bedroom, and there on a sofa, supported by cushions, the room much darkened, sat, leaning back, my beloved mamma, breathing rather heavily, in her silk dressing-gown, with her cap on, looking quite herself. "Seeing that my presence did not disturb her, I knelt before her, kissed her dear hand, and pressed it to my cheek; but, though she opened her eyes, she did not, I think, know me. She brushed my hand off, and the dreadful {458}reality was before me that for the first time she did not know the child she had ever received with such tender smiles. I went out to sob.... I asked the doctors if there was no hope. They said they feared none whatever, for consciousness had left her.... "I entered her room about eight o'clock, the window was wide open and both doors. I sat on a footstool, holding her dear hand. Meantime her face grew paler (though, in truth, her cheeks had that pretty, fresh color they always had, up to within half an hour of the last), the features longer and sharper. The breathing became easier. I fell on my knees holding the beloved hand, which was still warm, though heavier, in both of mine. I felt the end was fast approaching, as Clarke went out to call Albert and Alice, I only left gazing on that beloved face, and feeling as if my heart would break.... It was a solemn, sacred, never-to-be-forgotten scene.