Once after this she recognised the doctor. Once she asked for her Prayer-book and spectacles, but before they could be brought she had lapsed again into unconsciousness. When her sister addressed her by name, she turned her head, but did not open her eyes. Then on November 8 appeared more alarming bulletins, and on the 9th the fatal notice, ‘Miss Beale is sinking.’ ‘We went through the morning,’ says Miss Sturge, ‘feeling like Elisha. “Knowest thou that the Lord will take away thy master from thy head to-day? Yea, I know it, hold ye your peace.”’ Not in Cheltenham only, but far and wide her children were praying for her; watching for news, remembering and repeating to each other things she had said. It was stormy weather, and more than one thought of Wordsworth’s lines—lines which she had often read to her class—written when he was expecting to hear of the death of Charles James Fox:— ‘A power is passing from the earth To breathless Nature’s dark abyss.’ Miss Beale died on Friday, November 9, at 12.15, during College hours. It was thought best that the girls should hear of her death before leaving. When all were assembled in the Princess Hall the Vice-Principal said: ‘It has pleased God to take from us our beloved Principal.’ In a few words she told the history of the last few days, and then said: ‘We feel that it is what she would have desired,—no long waiting in suffering or helplessness, but to go home straight from her work with her splendid powers scarcely impaired. “Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt, Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair, And what may quiet us in a death so noble.” ‘“The readiness is all.” Let us bear our grief with calmness and dignity. We know that it would be her wish that work should go on as usual.... We believe that love lasts on, and that the noble work she did for fifty years has done much for England and for womanhood, and that not only we who have been blessed by her gracious presence, but generations also to come shall reap the fruit of her toil, and rise up and call her blessed. Let us pray.’ Then followed a thanksgiving, adapted from the form of memorial service issued by authority in January 1901 after the death of Queen Victoria. Of the days immediately following Miss Beale’s death, Miss Sturge wrote: ‘Many of the staff and elder pupils were privileged to see the beloved form as it lay in the peace and majesty of death. Though not one of the thousand workers at College can have been unconscious of the mighty change that had come for all, the work went on as usual, and the College was closed only on November 16, the day of the funeral.’