Mrs. Roden was at Pegwell Bay when the end came; and to her fell the duty of making it known to Lord Hampstead. She went up to town immediately, leaving the Quaker in the desolate cottage, and sent down a note from Holloway to Hendon Hall. "I must see you as soon as possible. Shall I go to you, or will you come to me?" When she wrote the words she was sure that he would understand their purport, and yet it was easier to write so than to tell the cruel truth plainly. The note was sent down by a messenger, but Lord Hampstead in person was the answer.
There was no need of any telling. When he stood before her dressed from head to foot in black, she took him by the two hands and looked into his face. "It is all over for her," he said,—"the trouble and the anguish, and the sense of long dull days to come. My Marion! How infinitely she has the best of it! How glad I ought to be that it is so."
"You must wait, Lord Hampstead," she said.
"Pray, pray, let me have no consolation. Waiting in the sense you mean there will be none. For the one relief which will finally come to me I must of course wait. Did she say any word that you would wish to tell me!"
"Many, many."
"Were they for my ears?"
"What other words should she have spoken to me? They were prayers for your health."
"My health needs not her prayers."
"Prayers for your soul's health."
"Such praying will be efficacious there,—or would be were anything needed to make her fit for those angels among whom she has gone. For me they can do nothing,—unless it be that in knowing how much she loved me I may strive to be as she was."