The speech attracted much attention, and Sir Charles was now quoted as one whom men would wish to see in any Liberal Ministry. In the public field, during the spring and summer of 1874, all went well with him. But his personal life during these months was overshadowed by approaching calamity. Lady Dilke was again in ill-health, and was under the presentiment of approaching death. 'Our last happy time was at Paris at Christmas, 1873, on our way home from Monaco, when Gambetta's brightness was answered by our own.' Sir Charles occupied himself with buying land at Broadstairs, where the climate was specially favourable to his wife's health, but as the plans for building on it progressed, he could note that the keenness of her interest 'drooped and died.' After the beginning of August there were no more dinner-parties, and although those who came to the house--of whom Sir William Harcourt was the last to be admitted--found its mistress wearing a gay face, the gloom deepened over her, and she suffered acutely from insomnia. A child was born in September; she lived to see her son, the present Sir Wentworth Dilke, but she never rallied. Death came to her with difficulty, early in the night of September 20th. Sir Charles, overstrained already by long watching, was completely unstrung by the unlooked-for end of the final and terrible vigil. Having summoned his grandmother, Mrs. Chatfield, and asked her to take charge of his house and son--a charge which she fulfilled till her death--he fled from the scene of his suffering, and hid himself in Paris, seeing no one, and holding communication with no one. 'For about a month I think I did not see a letter. I worked steadily at historical work; but I have very little recollection of the time (except by looking at the notebooks which contain the work I did), and even within a few months afterwards was unable to recall it.' All the letters which poured in speak again and again of Lady Dilke's radiant charm. Moret, the Spanish Minister, who had been one of the guests at the last of all her dinner-parties, recalled her as he saw her then, "si belle, si bonne, si souriante, que j'éprouvai moi-même le bonheur qu'elle respirait." 'The beginning of my friendship with Cardinal Manning was his letter to me at this time, in which he said, "We have met only once, and that in public, but it was that meeting which enables me to understand what your affliction is now."' Gambetta wrote to him 'a really beautiful letter ': _"La République Française,_ "16, RUE DU CROISSANT, "PARIS, "_le 2 novembre_, 1874. "MON BIEN CHER AMI, "Plus que jamais permettez-moi de vous donner ce nom, qui, au milieu des terribles épreuves qui vous accablent, n'exprime que bien imparfaitement les sentiments de profond attachement, de volontaire solidarité que je vous ai voués.