One evening, her anxious nurses, with a view to divert her mind, talked of some little plans to take place on her restoration to health. She shook her head with an affecting and significant motion. "Don't deceive yourselves," said she; "remember, I tell you, I am but a very little time longer for this world." Then pressing to her heart her daughter, who knelt by her bedside, she held her head for some minutes clasped against her bosom, which throbbed, as with some internal and agonising conflict. "Poor heart," murmured she, in a deep and stifled tone, "what will become of thee!" She paused some moments, and at length, struggling to assume more composure, desired in a calmer voice that some one would read to her. Throughout the remainder of the evening she continued placidly and even cheerfully attentive to the person who read, observing that, should she recover, she designed to commence a long work, upon which she would bestow great pains and time. "Most of her writings," she added, "had been composed in too much haste." Her disorder rapidly drawing toward a period, the accumulation of the water upon her chest every moment threatened suffocation. For nearly fifteen nights and days she was obliged to be supported upon pillows, or in the arms of her young and affectionate nurses.[53] Her decease, through this period, was hourly expected. On the 24th of December she inquired how near was Christmas Day! Being answered, "Within a few days," "Yet," said she, "I shall never see it." The remainder of this melancholy day passed in undescribable tortures. Toward midnight, the sufferer exclaimed, "O God, O just and merciful God, help me to support this agony!" The whole of the ensuing day she continued to endure great anguish. In the evening a kind of lethargic stupor came on. Miss Robinson, approaching the pillow of her expiring mother, earnestly conjured her to speak, if in her power. "My darling Mary!" she faintly articulated, and spoke no more. In another hour she became insensible to the grief of those by whom she was surrounded, and breathed her last at a quarter past twelve on the following noon. The body was opened, at the express wish of Doctors Pope and Chandler. The immediate cause of her death appeared to have been a dropsy on the chest; but the sufferings which she endured previously to her decease were probably occasioned by six large gall-stones found in the gall-bladder. All her requests were strictly observed. Her remains were deposited, according to her direction, in the churchyard of Old Windsor; the spot was marked out by a friend to whom she had signified her wishes. The funeral was attended only by two literary friends.