As the night advanced he began to grow restless.  He could not sit still, but paced to and fro, with terror-haunted eyes, muttering incoherently to himself, and taking out his watch every few moments to note the passage of time.  At last, when his watch pointed to half-past eleven, he retired, without a word of farewell to his guests, to his bedroom, not knowing that not only his own watch, but every clock and watch in the house had been put forward half-an-hour by his anxious friends, “to deceive him into comfort.”

Having undressed and gone to bed, he ordered his valet to draw the curtains at the foot, as if to screen him from a second sight of the mysterious lady, and, sitting up in bed, watch in hand, he awaited the fatal hour of midnight.  As the minute hand slowly but surely drew near to twelve he asked to see his valet’s watch, and was relieved to find that it marked the same time as his own.  With beating heart and straining eyes he watched the hand draw nearer and nearer.  A minute more to go—­half a minute.  Now it pointed to the fateful twelve—­and nothing happened.  It crept slowly past.  The crisis was over.  He put down the watch with a deep sigh of relief, and then broke into a peal of laughter—­discordant, jubilant, defiant.

“This mysterious lady is not a true prophetess, I find,” he said to his valet, after spending a few minutes in further mirthful waiting.  “And now give me my medicine; I will wait no longer.”  The valet proceeded to mix his usual medicine, a dose of rhubarb, stirring it, as no spoon was at hand, with a tooth-brush lying on the table.  “You dirty fellow!” his lordship exclaimed.  “Go down and fetch a spoon.”

When the servant returned a few minutes later he found, to his horror, his master lying back on the pillow, unconscious and breathing heavily.  He ran downstairs again, shouting, “Help!  Help!  My lord is dying!” The alarmed guests rushed frantically to the chamber, only to find their host almost at his last gasp.  A few moments later he was dead, with the watch still clutched in his hand, pointing to half-past twelve.  He had died at the very stroke of midnight, as foretold by his ghostly visitant of three nights previously.

Thus strangely and dramatically died Thomas, second Lord Lyttelton, statesman, wit, and debauchee, precisely as he had been warned that he would die in a dream or vision of the night.  How far his death was due to natural causes, to the effect of fear on a diseased heart, none can say with certainty.  That his heart was diseased, that he had had many former seizures, during which his life seemed in danger, is beyond question; but if it was merely coincidence, it was surely the most remarkable coincidence on record, that his death should come at the exact moment foretold by the lady of his vision, as related by himself three days before the event.

Such a happening was strange and weird enough in all conscience; but it was no more inexplicable on natural grounds than what follows.  Among Lord Lyttelton’s boon companions was a Mr Andrews, with whom he had often discussed the possibilities of a future life.  On one such occasion his lordship had said:  “Well, if I die first, and am allowed, I will come and inform you.”