The Queen's kindness did not stop here. I was ill, overtasked with very heavy professional work, at the same time that I was writing the last chapters of my book. For months I had been engaged along with the late Mr Edmund Smith in negotiating, and successfully negotiating, for Lord Beaconsfield's Government, the purchase of the undertakings of all the London Water Companies, and preparing the Bill for vesting them in a public trust. The measure was defeated on Mr Gladstone's return to office in April 1880, and for this defeat it may safely be said the community of London has ever since had to suffer severely. Rest and change were essential for my recovery, and I at once determined to seek them in Venice and the north of Italy. Two days before I started I was commanded to dine with Her Majesty at Windsor, and on my arrival I was knighted and invested by her own hands with the Collar and Star of a Knight Commander of the Bath, the act being accompanied by words of commendation far more precious to me than any title of honour. The Queen had chosen for the ceremony the Prince Consort's working room, where all my conferences with her on the subject of the _Life_ had taken place. Her Majesty, I subsequently found, had some difficulty in getting the Star and Collar of the Bath ready in so short a time: I could not, therefore, but recognise in the promptitude of her action the kind thought, that the honour, which would come upon me by surprise, might help to cheer me in the search for health on which I was going abroad. Some years before this time I had occasion to see how keenly the Queen suffered on the death of a friend. On the 7th of March 1875 Sir Arthur Helps, who held a very warm place in her regard, died, after a few days' illness, from a cold caught at the Prince of Wales' levee. I was summoned to Buckingham Palace and found the Queen in tears, and moved to a degree that was distressing to witness. She had lost in him not only a valuable official, but a friend to whom she had for years trusted for counsel in times of personal distress or difficulty. Her first thought was for his family, and what could be done to lighten the embarrassment of the position in which his sudden death had placed them, and arrangements with this view were at once resolved upon and carried into effect. But, seeing what on this occasion I saw Her Majesty suffer, I could not but think how much sorrows of this kind, coming as they did with unusual frequency, and leaving impressions which in her case were far from transitory, must have added to the exhausting effects of the Queen's busy life.