'I wrote so far, and now I have been with my boy watching the removal of all that is mortal of this great and noble one from Arnhem to Flushing, convoyed to the water's edge by twelve hundred English soldiers, trailing their swords and muskets in the dust, while solemn music played.
'The surgeons have embalmed the poor, worn body, and the Earl of Leicester has commanded that it be taken to England for burial.
'"Mother," my boy said, as he clasped my hand tightly in his, as the barge which bore the coffin away vanished in the mist hanging over the river, "mother, why doth God take hence a brave and noble knight, and leave so many who are evil and do evil instead of good?"
'How can I answer questions like to this? I could only say to my son, "There is no answer. Now we only see as in a mirror darkly; at length we shall see clearer in the Light of God, and His ways are ever just."
'Dear sister, it is strange to have the hunger of my heart satisfied by God's gift to me of my boy from the very gates of death, and yet to have that same heart oppressed with sorrow for those who are left to mourn for the brave and noble one who is passed out of our sight. Yet is that same heart full of thankfulness that I have recovered my child. It is not all satisfaction with him. Every day I have to pray that much that he has learned in the Jesuit school should be unlearned. Yet, God forbid I should be slow to acknowledge that in some things Ambrose has been trained well—in obedience, and the putting aside of self, and the mortification of appetite. Yes, I feel that in this discipline he may have reaped a benefit which with me he might have missed. But, oh! Lucy, there are moments when I long with heart-sick longing for my joyous, if wilful child, who, on a fair spring evening long ago, sat astride on Sir Philip's horse, and had for his one wish to be such another brave and noble gentleman!
'Methinks this wish is gaining strength, and that the strange repression of all natural feeling which I sometimes notice, may vanish 'neath the brighter shining of love—God's love and his mother's.
'You would scarce believe, could you see Ambrose, that he—so tall and thin, with quiet and restrained movements and seldom smiling mouth—could be the little torment of Ford Place! Four years have told on my boy, like thrice that number, and belike the terrible ravages of the fever may have taken something of his youthful spring away.
'He is tender and gentle to me, but there is reserve.
'On one subject we can exchange but few words; you will know what that subject is. From the little I can gather, I think his father was not unkind to him; and far be it from me to forget the parting words, when the soul was standing ready to take its flight into the unseen world. But oh! my sister, how wide the gulf set between him, for whom the whole world, I may say, wears mourning garb to-day—for foreign countries mourn no less than England—how wide, I say, is the gulf set between that noble life and his, of whom I dare not write, scarce dare to think.
'Yet God's mercy is infinite in Christ Jesus, and the gulf, which looks so wide to us, may be bridged over by that same infinite mercy.