He passed her with a smile, glanced at Caroline and the trunk, and was making his way up the stairs, when she again addressed him.
"Is there any fresh news, sir?"
"Yes, and it is not good, Mrs. Watton," he replied, turning to speak. "Report says that a telegram has been received from Windsor, stating that there is no hope; that the Prince is rapidly sinking."
His voice was low, his manner subdued; and he raised his hat with unconscious reverence while he gave the answer. Watton lost her breath.
"It may not be true, sir! it may not be true!"
"I trust indeed it is not."
"But, sir, was there not hope this afternoon?"
"According to the report that reached us, there was. Could the Prince only bear up through this one night all would be well."
He passed up the stairs as he spoke. Watton led the way into a sitting-room at the back of the house, and Mrs. Cray followed her in perplexed silence, in eager curiosity, unable to understand the words she had heard.
That great and good Prince, whom England knew too little, and whom to know was to love, was indeed lying in extremis in the castle that had been his many years' home. On that calm, clear, soft December night, when the streets of London were alive with bustle and pleasure, there was a dying bed not many miles away from it, around whose hushed stillness knelt England's sovereign, England's royal children. The gracious and benignant Prince, the faithful consort, the loyal husband, the tender anxious father, was winging his flight away; sinking gradually but surely from those loving arms, those tearful eyes, those yearning prayers, which could not keep him.