"I ask your pardon," said the cottager humbly. "I ought not to cry in your presence."
"Oh, it does me good," replied the Queen in the midst of her own tears. "I am so thankful to cry with someone who knows just how I feel. It was all so sudden, so sudden."
This visit to Balmoral was in May, and in July the brave-hearted Queen gave away her chief comforter, for she did not think it right to allow the marriage of the Princess Alice to be postponed longer. Many preparations for it had already been made before the illness of the Prince. The Highlanders were all interested in the marriage, for the Princess Alice was a great favorite among them; and in the autumn of 1861, many wedding gifts had been made by the Princess to the cottagers, for in the Queen's family it was the custom to make presents as well as receive them at the wedding seasons.
The marriage took place at Osborne. The day which all had expected to be so bright and happy was sad and lonely for the want of the dead Prince. There was no rejoicing, for everything was so associated with him that no one could be merry. Even the wedding dress of the bride was of lace whose pattern he himself had chosen.
In a few days Prince Louis and the Princess Alice left England for their German home. According to what had become a custom among the Queen's children, the Princess wrote to her mother almost every day. Her life in Darmstadt was far more simple than the Queen's had been immediately after her marriage. The usual time of rising was half-past seven or a little earlier. Coffee was drunk at eight, and generally the next two hours were spent out of doors in riding or walking. From ten to twelve, the Princess wrote or worked with her private secretary, and some time in the morning she read the newspapers, an occupation which she called "a great bore." Breakfast took the time between twelve and one. At two, people began to come to call upon her. Dinner was at four. After dinner came a little leisure, then a drive "somewhere for tea." By half-past ten the day was over. The Princess lamented that she had so little time for her music and drawing, and when she was away from the city, she made many sketches, but she was in a wooded country, "And the trees are my misfortune," she said, "as I draw them so badly." After a few months, the twelve-year-old brother Arthur went to visit her. He was a bit of home, and she was delighted to have him. "He has won all hearts," she wrote to the Queen, "and I am so proud when they admire my little brother." When September came, the Princess and her husband went to Thuringia to meet the Queen; and there, much to the Queen's pleasure, it was decided that her daughter and Prince Louis should spend the winter in England, though the Princess with her ready sympathy wrote that she should regret not remaining in Germany for the one reason that the people would feel her absence so much. "They are most kind," she added, for she shared the feeling of her mother that the devotion of the people was not a thing that they could demand, but was a personal kindness shown to them.