Five years before (June 29, 1873) the Princess Alice had lost another favourite child, who fell out of the window of the room from which she had gone out for a few seconds, and was killed before her eyes. The misery which this loss had caused the Princess might be read in the settled sadness of expression which thenceforth marked her beautiful face, and seemed to foreshadow the early death which Heaven so often gives its favourites. Now, in nursing all her numerous children through a virulent attack of diphtheria, she showed the noble, unselfish courage for which she had always been distinguished. One of them, the Princess May, died, as mentioned in the Queen's letter, and very soon (14th December) the Princess herself succumbed to the same dreadful epidemic. The other children recovered. It is well to recall what the then Prince of Wales wrote of his beloved sister to Lord Granville, in a letter read by his lordship to the House of Lords: "So good, so kind, so clever! We had gone through so much together--my father's illness, then my own; and she has succumbed to the pernicious malady which laid low her husband and children, whom she watched and nursed with unceasing care and attention. The Queen bears up bravely, but her grief is deep beyond words." Overwhelmed by it though she was, Her Majesty's instant care was to settle how she might fill a mother's place in looking after the young children that were left behind. And that she did fill it is well known, and she was requited by seeing them all before she died settled in life suitably to their rank, and the youngest called to share the Imperial throne of the Czar of Russia. In her natural anxiety to see a spot which had so many tender associations for her, the Queen visited Darmstadt in the spring of 1884, and in a letter to me (May 12) from Windsor Castle, after her return, she makes the following interesting allusion to her visit:-- "The Queen has been living in the dear Grand Duchess's rooms at the Neue Palais at Darmstadt, where everything remains precisely as it used to be. The Queen's sitting-room was hers, and the Queen only placed a small writing-table in the room for her own use, leaving everything else untouched. This opens into the dear Grand Duchess's bedroom, where she died, and out of one of the windows of which poor little 'Frittie'[26] fell, where there is now a fine painted glass window, with the following words, 'Of such are the kingdom of heaven,' 'Not lost, but gone before.' It is a charming house.... The light air of the Continent is certainly very different from England, and more like Scotland. The country was brilliant, and lovely in its spring attire of most vivid green; the birch woods are quite beautiful. "It seemed almost an irony of fate to see nature so bright and beautiful, when the heart was so sad, and could feel no pleasure."