rees, among the birds and butterflies and the scent of
flowers," she left him, never to look into his eyes again.

In the afternoon, feeling fatigued, and not inclined to much walking, he
drove with my aunt into Cobham. There he left the carriage and walked
home through the park. After dinner he remained seated in the
dining-room, through the evening, as from that room he could see the
effect of some lighted Chinese lanterns, which he had hung in the
conservatory during the day, and talked to my aunt about his great love
for "Gad's Hill," his wish that his name might become more associated
with the place, and his desire to be buried near it.

On the morning of the eighth he was in excellent spirits, speaking of his
book, at which he intended working through the day and in which he was
most intensely interested. He spent a busy morning in the chalet, and it
must have been then that he wrote that description of Rochester, which
touched our hearts when we read it for the first time after its writer
lay dead: "Brilliant morning shines on the old city. Its antiquities and
ruins are surpassingly beautiful with the lusty ivy gleaming in the sun
and the rich trees waving in the balmy air. Changes of glorious light
from moving boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, woods and
fields, or rather, from the one great garden of the whole cultivated
island in its yielding time, penetrate into the cathedral, subdue its
earthly odor, and preach the Resurrection and the Life."

He returned to the house for luncheon, seemingly perfectly well and
exceedingly cheerful and hopeful. He smoked a cigar in his beloved
conservatory, and went back to the chalet. When he came again to the
house, about an hour before the time fixed for an early dinner, he was
tired, silent and abstracted, but as this was a mood very usual to him
after a day of engrossing work, it caused no alarm nor surprise to my
aunt, who happened to be the only member of the family at home. While
awaiting dinner he wrote some letters in the library and arranged some
trifling business matters, with a view to his departure for London the
following morning.

* * * * *

It was not until they were seated at the dinner-table that a striking
change in the color and expression of his face startled my aunt. Upon
her asking him if he were ill, he answered "Yes, very ill; I have been
very ill for the last hour." But when she said that she w