“A long pause, and then while we were all three drawing near her bed we heard her say: 

“‘I think God has forgotten me.’

“The fire was weaving patterns on the ceiling; every shadow seemed to be looking with pity on the silence of that room, the long silence that has never been broken.

“I did not go home that night, but slept at Alfred’s house.  Lucy had gone to the early Communion, but I had not accompanied her, as I was tired of praying.  I must have fallen into a heavy sleep, when suddenly I felt some one touching my bed.  I woke with a start and saw nurse standing beside me.  She said in a calm voice: 

“’My dear, you must come.  Don’t look like that; you won’t be able to walk.’

“Able to walk!  Of course I was!  I was in my dressing-gown and downstairs in a flash and on to the bed.  The room was full of people.  I lay with my arm under Laura, as I did in the old Glen days, when after our quarrels we crept into each other’s beds to’make it up.’  Alfred was holding one of her hands against his forehead; and Charty was kneeling at her feet.

“She looked much the same, but a deeper shadow ran under her brow and her mouth seemed to be harder shut.  I put my cheek against her shoulder and felt the sharpness of her spine.  For a minute we lay close to each other, while the sun, fresh from the dawn, played upon the window-blinds. ...  Then her breathing stopped; she gave a shiver and died. ...  The silence was so great that I heard the flight of Death and the morning salute her soul.

“I went downstairs and took her will out of the drawer where she had put it and told Alfred what she had asked me to do.  The room was dark with people; and a tall man, gaunt and fervid, was standing up saying a prayer.  When he had finished I read the will through: 

My Will [Footnote:  The only part of the will I have left out is a few names with blank spaces which she intended to fill up.], made by me, Laura Mary Octavia Lyttelton, February, 1886.

“I have not much to leave behind me, should I die next month, having my treasure deep in my heart where no one can reach it, and where even Death cannot enter.  But there are some things that have long lain at the gates of my Joy House that in some measure have the colour of my life in them, and would, by rights of love, belong to those who have entered there.  I should like Alfred to give these things to my friends, not because my friends will care so much for them, but because they will love best being where I loved to be.

“I want, first of all, to tell Alfred that all I have in the world and all I am and ever shall be, belongs to him, and to him more than any one, so that if I leave away from him anything that speaks to him of a joy unknown to me, or that he holds dear for any reason wise or unwise, it is his, and my dear friends will forgive him and me.