With appalling suddenness Victoria had exchanged the serene radiance of happiness for the utter darkness of woe. In the first dreadful moments those about her had feared that she might lose her reason, but the iron strain within her held firm, and in the intervals between the intense paroxysms of grief it was observed that the Queen was calm. She remembered, too, that Albert had always disapproved of exaggerated manifestations of feeling, and her one remaining desire was to do nothing but what he would have wished. Yet there were moments when her royal anguish would {222} brook no restraints. One day she sent for the Duchess of Sutherland, and, leading her to the Prince's room, fell prostrate before his clothes in a flood of weeping, while she adjured the Duchess to tell her whether the beauty of Albert's character had ever been surpassed.[4] At other times a feeling akin to indignation swept over her. 'The poor fatherless baby of eight months,' she wrote to the King of the Belgians, 'is now the utterly heart-broken and crushed widow of forty-two! My _life_ as a _happy_ one is _ended_! The world is gone for _me_! ... Oh! to be cut off in the prime of life--to see our pure, happy, quiet, domestic life, which _alone_ enabled me to bear my _much_ disliked position, CUT OFF at forty-two--when I _had_ hoped with such instinctive certainty that God never _would_ part us, and would let us grow old together (though _he_ always talked of the shortness of life)--is _too awful_, too cruel!'[5] The tone of outraged Majesty seems to be discernible. Did she wonder in her heart of hearts how the Deity could have dared?