"Fainter and fainter grew the breathing. At last it ceased. The clock struck half-past nine at the very moment. Convulsed with sobs, I fell upon the hand, and covered it with kisses. Albert lifted me up and took me into the next room, himself entirely melted into tears, which is unusual for him, deep as his feelings are, and clasped me in his arms. I asked if all was over; he said, 'Yes!' "I went into the room again and gave one look. My darling mother was sitting as she had done before; but was already white! O God! How awful! How mysterious! But what a blessed end! Her gentle spirit at rest,--her sufferings over! But I--I, wretched child,--who had lost the mother I so tenderly loved, from whom for these forty-one years I had never been parted except for a few weeks,--what was my case? My childhood, everything, seemed to crowd upon me at once. I seemed to have lived through a life, to have become old! The {459} [Illustration: 0465] {461}blessed future meeting and her peace and rest must henceforward be my comfort. "My beloved Albert felt it, and feels it so intensely. He has shed so many tears; he was so tender, and kind, and full of loving affection, of tender consideration to spare my feelings. Albert took me upstairs, and said it was better to go at once into her dear sitting-room, where we so constantly saw her. We did so; but oh, the agony of it! All, all unchanged,--chairs, cushions, everything,--all on the tables, her very work-basket with her work, the little canary bird, of which she was so fond, singing! In these two dear rooms, where we had so constantly seen her, where everything spoke of life, we remained a little while to weep and pray, I kneeling down at her chair." The Prince of Wales and Princess Helena arrived from London, and were taken by the queen to gaze upon the grandmother to whom they were so fondly attached. Then the relations at a distance had to be remembered, and the queen wrote a most touching letter to King Leopold, "the last of his generation." The Duchess of Kent was mourned by every member of her household, from the highest to the lowest. Some of them had been in her employ for more than thirty years, and all felt that they had lost a friend. On hearing of her grandmother's death, the princess royal set out for England, and reached Windsor Castle on the eighteenth. Letters filled with expressions of the warmest affection and sympathy were constantly delivered to the queen, and addresses of condolence from both houses of parliament were voted at once, in which a warm tribute was offered to the memory of the deceased duchess.