Here, within a few days, Lady Trevelyan died. Throughout her illness she had been following the progress of the new notes on wild-flowers (afterwards to be "Proserpina") with keen interest, and Sir Walter lent the help of botanical science to Ruskin's more poetical and artistic observations. For the sake of this work, and for the "children," and with a wise purpose of bearing up under the heavy blow that had fallen, the two friends continued their journey for a while among the mountains. From Thun they went to Interlachen and the Giessbach. Ruskin occupied himself closely in tracing Studer's sections across the great lake-furrow of central Switzerland--"something craggy for his mind to break upon," as Byron said when he was in trouble. At the Giessbach there was not only geology and divine scenery, enjoyable in lovely weather, but an interesting figure in the foreground, the widowed daughter of the hotel landlord, beautiful and consumptive, but brave as a Swiss girl should be. They all seem to have fallen in love with her, so to speak the young English girls as much as the impressionable art-critic: and the new human interest in her Alpine tragedy relieved, as such interests do, the painfulness of the circumstances through which they had been passing. Her sister Marie was like an Allegra to this Penserosa; bright and brilliant in native genius. She played piano-duets with the young ladies; taught Alpine botany to the savants; guided them to the secret dells and unknown points of view; and with a sympathy unexpected in a stranger, beguiled them out of their grief, and won their admiration and gratitude. Marie of the Giessbach was often referred to in letters of the time, and for many years after, with warmly affectionate remembrances. A few bits from his letters to his mother, which I have been permitted to copy, will indicate the impressions of this summer's tour. "HÔTEL DU GIESBACH, _6th June, 1866_, "MY DEAREST MOTHER, "Can you at all fancy walking out in the morning in a garden full of lilacs just in rich bloom, and pink hawthorn in masses; and along a little terrace with lovely pinks coming into cluster of colour all over the low wall beside it; and a sloping bank of green sward from it--and below that, the Giesbach! Fancy having a real Alpine waterfall in one's garden,--seven hundred feet high. You see, we are just in time for the spring, here, and the strawberries are ripening on the rocks. Joan and Constance have been just scrambling about and gathering them for me. Then there's the blue-green lake below, and Interlaken and the lake of Thun in the distance. I think I never saw anything so beautiful. Joan will write to you about the people, whom she has made great friends with, already." "_7th June, 1866_.