'It will be as God pleases, boy,' and there, in the corridor, as he was hastening to his wife's apartments, she came towards him with outstretched arms.
'Oh! my husband,' she said, as he clasped her to his breast. 'Oh! pity me, pity me! and pray God that I may find comfort.'
'Yes, yes, my sweetheart,' the Earl said, and then husband and wife turned into their own chamber, Will, subdued at the sight of his mother's grief, not attempting to follow them, and Lucy was again alone.
CHAPTER XV
THE PASSING OF PHILIP
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'Oh, Death, that hast us of much riches reft, Tell us at least what hast thou with it done? What has become of him whose flower here left Is but the shadow of his likeness gone? Scarce like the shadow of that which he was, Nought like, but that he like a shade did pass. But that immortal spirit which was decked With all the dowries of celestial grace, By sovereign choice from heavenly choirs select And lineally derived from angel's race; Oh, what is now of it become aread? Ah me, can so divine a thing be dead! Ah no, it is not dead, nor can it die, But lives for aye in blissful Paradise, Where, like a new-born babe it soft doth lie In bed of lilies wrapped in tender wise, And dainty violets from head to feet, And compassed all about with roses sweet.' From the Lament of Sir Philip by Mary, Countess of Pembroke. |
'At Arnhem, in the month of October 1586; this to my dear sister, Lucy Forrester.' This was the endorsement of a letter from Mary Gifford, which was put into Lucy's hands on the day when a wave of sorrow swept over the country as the news was passed from mouth to mouth that Sir Philip Sidney was dead.
There had been so many alternations of hope and fear, and the official reports from the Earl of Leicester had been on the hopeful side, while those of Robert Sidney and other of his devoted friends and servants, had latterly been on the side of despair.
Now Mary Gifford had written for Lucy's information an account of what had passed in these five-and-twenty days, when Sir Philip lay in the house of Madame Gruithuissens, ministered to by her uncle, Master George Gifford.