reluctance, and he
added a codicil to his will.

This pleased me greatly, and gave me comfort, for I dreaded nothing so
much, after all my high living, as being under any person, relation or
stranger, and whether they exercised any power over me or not.

I saw the lawyer come out of the chamber first, but was above asking him
any questions; the next were the executors and chaplain. I asked the
last how they came to have words. He did not answer me directly, but
begged to know whose pleasure it was to have the codicil annexed. "It
was mine, sir," replied I; "and it made me very uneasy before I could
have the favour granted." He only replied by saying, "Ah! poor lady, the
favour, as you are pleased to term it, is not calculated for any benefit
to you; think the worst you can of it."

I was terribly uneasy at what the chaplain had said, but I imagined to
myself that I could not be worse off than I thought I should be before
the codicil was annexed; and as he withdrew without saying any more, I
was fain to rest satisfied with what I had heard, and that amounted to
nothing.

The next day after this the physicians that attended my lord told him it
was time for him to settle his worldly affairs, and prepare himself for
a hereafter. I now found all was over, and I had no other hopes of his
life than the physicians' declaration of his being near his death. For
it often happens that the gentlemen of the faculty give out that a man
is near his death, to make the cure appear to be the effect of their
great skill in distempers and medicine; as others, when they cannot find
out the real disease, give out that a man's end is near, rather than
discover their want of judgment; and this I thought might be the case
with our doctors of physic.

Our son was still kept from the university, and lodged at the house of
one of his future guardians; but when he heard that his father was so
near his end, he was very little out of his presence, for he dearly
loved him. My lord sent the day before his death to lock and seal up all
the doors in his dwelling house at The Hague; and the steward had
orders, in case of my lord's decease, not to let anybody come in, not
even his lady (who had for some time lodged in the same house with her
lord), without an order from the executors.

The keys of the doors were carried to him, and as he saw his death
approach, he prepared for it, and, in fact, resigned up the keys of
everything to the executors, an