That night Lettice and I watched together by Lady Lucy's bedside. And all things that could distract and divide seemed for the time to be dissolved in the peace of her presence. She revived once or twice and spoke, although it seemed more in rapt soliloquy than to any mortal ear. "Everything grows clear to me," she said once; "everything I cared most to see. The divisions and perplexities which bewilder us here are only the colours the light puts on when it steps on earth. On earth it is scarlet and purple and bordered work; in heaven it is fine linen, clean and white, clean and white." Often she murmured in clear rapid tones, very awful in the silence of the sick-chamber at night, the words,-- "The king, the king!" Lettice and I feared to go to her to ask what she meant, dreading some question we dared not answer. We thought belike her mind was wandering, as she did not seem to be appealing to us or looking for an answer. But at length the words came more distinctly, though broken and low, and then we knew what they meant,-- "The King! King of kings! Faithful and true. Mine eyes shall see the King in His beauty. He shall deliver the needy when he crieth, King of the poor, King of the nations, King of kings, Faithful and true. I am passing beyond the shadows. I begin to see the lights which cast them. Beyond the storms--I see the angels of the winds. Beyond the thunders--they are music, from above. Beyond the clouds--they are the golden streets, from above. Mine eyes shall see the King--as He is; as thou art; no change in Thee, but a change in me. In Thy beauty as Thou art." All the following day the things of earth were growing dim to her, but to the last her courtesy seemed to survive her strength. No little service was unacknowledged; even when the voice was inaudible, the parched lips moved in thanks or in prayer. And on the early morning of the 21st of January she passed away from us, her hand in Lettice's, her eyes deep with the awful joy of some sight we could not see. On the evening of that very day came the tidings that the king had been brought, on the 19th of January, as a criminal, before the High Court of Justice in Westminster Hall, to be tried for his life as the "principal author of the calamities of the nation." When Lettice heard it, the first burst of tears came breaking the stupor of her sorrow, as she sobbed on my shoulder, "Thank God she is safe, beyond the storms of this terrible distracted world. She is gone where she will never more be perplexed what to believe or what to do." "She is gone," said my Father, tenderly taking one of her hands in his, "where loyalty and love of country, and liberty and law are never at variance; where the noblest feelings and the noblest hearts are never ranged against each other. And we hope to follow her thither." "But oh," sobbed Lettice, "this terrible space between!"