Bertie had grown pale, but the Queen did not notice that.


* * *

She had thought he was a little better. He sat up in bed and arranged his hair, just as he used to when he was going somewhere.

Then she noticed that there was a dusky hue about his face which she had never seen before.

He seemed to be preparing himself – as though he were going on a journey.

She could not bear it. He must not see her distress. She got up and went out.

But she must be with him. She had a numbing fear that there might not be much time left. She went and sat beside his bed.

He was aware of her. ‘Gutes Frauchen,’ he murmured.

All the children came in one by one and kissed him.

She did not know how she endured it, but she controlled her grief because she could not bear that he should see it nor could she bear to leave him.


* * *

She bent over him. He looked at her wonderingly.

‘Es ist kleines Frauchen,’ he said, and he smiled and kissed her.

She sat there holding his hand and suddenly all the pain and suffering seemed to fall away from his face and he was the young and beautiful Albert again at whom she had only to look to know that she would love him for ever.

Albert was dead.

Bibliography

Argyll, The Duke of, V.R.I., Queen Victoria, her Life and Empire

Aubrey, William Hickman Smith, History of England

Creston, Dormer, The Youthful Queen Victoria

Davey, Richard, Victoria (Queen and Empress)

Duff, David, Victoria in the Highlands, The Personal Journal of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, with Notes, Introductions and a Description of the Acquisition and Rebuilding of Balmoral Castle

Esher, Viscount, The Girlhood of Queen Victoria (A Selection of Her Majesty’s Diaries between the years 1832 and 1840)

Greville, Charles C. H. (edited by Henry Reeve), The Greville Memoirs. A Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria

edited by Philip Whitwell Wilson, The Greville Diary

Jerrold, Clare, Early Court of Queen Victoria

Jerrold, Clare, The Married Life of Queen Victoria

Longford, Elizabeth, Victoria R.I.

Martin, Sir Theodore, Life of the Prince Consort

Oliphant, Mrs, Queen Victoria, A Personal Sketch

Pike, E. Royston, Britain’s Prime Ministers

Sitwell, Edith, Victoria of England

Smith, G. Barnett, Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria

Smith, G. Barnett, The Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria

Strachey, Lytton, Queen Victoria

edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee, Dictionary of National Biography

Tooley, Sarah A., The Personal Life of Queen Victoria

edited by Christopher Benson and Viscount Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, A Selection of Her Majesty’s Correspondence between the years 1837–1861

edited by Arthur Helps, Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, From 1848–1861