ssells.

In 1885 the marriage of her son Rollo to Miss Alice Godfrey was a great
happiness to her. But in little more than a year, soon after the birth of a
son, Mrs. Rollo Russell died, and again Lady Russell suffered deeply, for
she always found the sorrows of her children harder to bear than her own.

To retire more and more from the world of many engagements and important
affairs was easy to her, easier than it proves to many who have figured
there with less distinction. Playing a prominent part in that world does
not make people happy; but, as a rule, it prevents them from being
contented with anything else. It was not so with her; in the days most
crowded with successes and excitements her thoughts kept flying home. She
had always felt that a quiet, busy family life was the one most natural to
her. When she was a girl at Minto, helping to educate her younger brothers
and sisters, she had written in her diary:

_August_ 26, 1836

Chiefly unto children, O Lord, do I feel myself called; in them I
see Thy image reflected more pure than in anything else in this
sinful though beautiful world, and in serving them my love to Thee
increases.

Her wish was fulfilled to an unusual degree. One of a large family of
brothers and sisters, she was still helping in the education of the younger
ones when she married, and her marriage at once brought her the care of a
young family; soon, too, children of her own; while her old age brought her
the charge of successive grandchildren. During the lifetime of Lord and
Lady Amberley their children often spent many months at Pembroke Lodge
while their parents were abroad, and when both father and mother had died
the two boys came to live with their grandparents. Ten years later her
youngest son's boy was brought to her on the day of his mother's death,
when he was two months old, and remained with her till her son's second
marriage in 1891. The children of her stepdaughters were also loving
grandchildren to her, and often came for long visits to Pembroke Lodge.

Lady Russell had sometimes thought that when days of leisure came, she
would give some of her time to literary work, and write reminiscences of
the many interesting men and women she had known and the stirring events
she had lived through; but the unexpected and daily cares and duties which
came upon her made this impossible. [97] She was one who would never
neglect the living needs of those around her, and