Very small she looked and delicate; her hair seemed like a handful of fine silk on the pillow, her hands white flowers on the coverlet; her head was drooping slightly sideways, and the gentle look she wore in life had returned, effacing all trace of suffering.
There were many standing round her; all made way at the approach of His Highness; he came up to the bed and looked down at her.
"'My life is waxen old with heaviness,'" he murmured, "'and my years with mourning.... I am become like a broken vessel.'"
He bent over her stillness, his transient sorrow breaking vainly against her eternal repose.
"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord," said Elisabeth Cromwell, and touched her husband's hand.
He went to his knees on the bed-step and put his head on his folded hands.
"May He who sitteth above the waterflood comfort me—for in myself I can do nothing!" he muttered.
They left him there, for they thought that he prayed; but it was not so: the valiant spirit had been robbed of its matchless fortitude at last; His Highness was in a swoon of anguish.