[Original]
blessed future meeting and her peace and rest must henceforward be my comfort.
"My beloved Albert felt it, and feels it so intensely. He has shed so many tears; he was so tender, and kind, and full of loving affection, of tender consideration to spare my feelings. Albert took me upstairs, and said it was better to go at once into her dear sitting-room, where we so constantly saw her. We did so; but oh, the agony of it! All, all unchanged,—chairs, cushions, everything,—all on the tables, her very work-basket with her work, the little canary bird, of which she was so fond, singing! In these two dear rooms, where we had so constantly seen her, where everything spoke of life, we remained a little while to weep and pray, I kneeling down at her chair."
The Prince of Wales and Princess Helena arrived from London, and were taken by the queen to gaze upon the grandmother to whom they were so fondly attached. Then the relations at a distance had to be remembered, and the queen wrote a most touching letter to King Leopold, "the last of his generation."
The Duchess of Kent was mourned by every member of her household, from the highest to the lowest. Some of them had been in her employ for more than thirty years, and all felt that they had lost a friend.
On hearing of her grandmother's death, the princess royal set out for England, and reached Windsor Castle on the eighteenth. Letters filled with expressions of the warmest affection and sympathy were constantly delivered to the queen, and addresses of condolence from both houses of parliament were voted at once, in which a warm tribute was offered to the memory of the deceased duchess.
The funeral took place on the twenty-fifth, in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, the prince consort acting as chief-mourner, supported by the Prince of Wales and Prince Leiningen. The pall-bearers were the six ladies-in-waiting who had been with the duchess for a long time. The scene was very affecting, and everybody wept. The Dean of Windsor was so affected that he almost broke down in reading the service.
The death of the duchess greatly increased the labors of the prince consort; for not only was he left her sole executor, and had therefore all her affairs to settle up, but he endeavored in every possible way to save the queen any care, and therefore took many of her duties upon himself.