Ellenborough attacked the Queen in the House of Lords; there were curious whispers in high quarters that she had had thoughts of abdicating--whispers followed by regrets that she had not done so.[18] Victoria, outraged and injured, felt that she was misunderstood. She was profoundly unhappy. After Lord Ellenborough's speech, General Grey declared that he 'had never seen the Queen so completely upset.' 'Oh, how fearful it is,' she herself wrote to Lord Granville, 'to be suspected--uncheered--unguided and unadvised--and how alone the poor Queen feels!'[19] Nevertheless, suffer as she might, she was as resolute as ever; she would not move by a hair's-breadth from the course that a supreme obligation marked out for her; she would be faithful to the end. And so, when Schleswig-Holstein was forgotten, {230} and even the image of the Prince had begun to grow dim in the fickle memories of men, the solitary watcher remained immutably concentrated at her peculiar task. The world's hostility, steadily increasing, was confronted and outfaced by the impenetrable weeds of Victoria. Would the world never understand? It was not mere sorrow that kept her so strangely sequestered; it was devotion, it was self-immolation; it was the laborious legacy of love. Unceasingly the pen moved over the black-edged paper. The flesh might be weak, but that vast burden must be borne. And fortunately, if the world would not understand, there were faithful friends who did. There was Lord Granville, and there was kind Mr. Theodore Martin. Perhaps Mr. Martin, who was so clever, would find means to make people realise the facts. She would send him a letter, pointing out her arduous labours and the difficulties under which she struggled, and then he might write an article for one of the magazines. It is not, she told him in 1863, 'the Queen's _sorrow_ that keeps her secluded.... It is her _overwhelming work_ and her health, which is greatly shaken by her sorrow, and the totally overwhelming amount of work and responsibility--work which she feels really wears her out. Alice Helps was wonder-struck at the Queen's room; and if Mrs. Martin will look at it, she can tell Mr. Martin what surrounds her. From the hour she gets out of bed till she gets into it again there is work, work, work,--letter-boxes, questions, &c., which are dreadfully exhausting--and if she had not comparative rest and quiet in the evening she would most likely not be _alive_. Her brain is constantly overtaxed.'[20] It was too true. {231} III