The betrothal of Princess Alice occurred within the week. Her Majesty has given an account in the pages of her journal, transferred to the "Life of the Prince Consort," how simply and naturally it happened. "After dinner, whilst talking to the gentlemen, I perceived Alice and Louis talking before the fireplace more earnestly than usual, and when I passed to go to the other room both came up to me, and Alice in much agitation said he had proposed to her, and he begged for my blessing. I could only squeeze his hand and say 'Certainly,' and that we would see him in our room, later. Got through the evening work as well as we could. Alice came to our room ... agitated but quiet.... Albert sent for Louis to his room, went first to him, and then called Alice and me in...." The bride was only seventeen, the bridegroom twenty-three years of age--but nearly two years were to elapse, with, alas! sad changes in their course, before the marriage thus happily settled was celebrated. This winter her Majesty's old servant and friend, Lord Aberdeen, died. In December the Empress of the French, who had recently lost her sister, the Duchess of Alba, in order to recover health and cheerfulness, paid a flying visit in private to England and Scotland. From Claridge's Hotel she went for a day to Windsor to see the Queen and the Prince. Towards the close of the year the Prince had a brief but painful attack of one of the gastric affections becoming so common with him. In January, 1861, the Queen received the news of the death of the invalid King of Prussia at Sans Souci. His brother, the Crown Prince, who had been regent for years, succeeded to the throne, of which the husband of the Princess Royal was now the next heir. In the beginning of the year the Prince of Wales matriculated at Cambridge. In February the Queen opened Parliament. The twenty-first anniversary of the royal wedding-day falling on a Sunday, it was celebrated quietly but with much happiness. The Queen wrote to her uncle, King Leopold, "Very few can say with me that their husband, at the end of twenty-one years, is not only full of the friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage brings with it, but of the same tender love as in the very first days of our marriage." CHAPTER XXXIII. DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF KENT. The Duchess of Kent was now seventy-five years of age. For the last few years she had been in failing health, tenderly cared for by her children. When she had been last in town she had not gone to her own house, Clarence House, but had stayed with her daughter in the cheerful family circle at Buckingham Palace. A loss in her household fell heavily on the aged Duchess. Sir George Cooper, her secretary, to whose services she had been used for many years, a man three years her junior, died in February, 1860.