Though the violence of her perturbations gradually subsided, her cheerfulness did not return.  For months, for years, she continued in settled gloom.  Her life became one of almost complete seclusion.  Arrayed in thickest crepe, she passed dolefully from Windsor to Osborne, from Osborne to Balmoral.  Rarely visiting the capital, refusing to take any part in the ceremonies of state, shutting herself off from the slightest intercourse with society, she became almost as unknown to her subjects as some potentate of the East.  They might murmur, but they did not understand.  What had she to do with empty shows and vain enjoyments?  No!  She was absorbed by very different preoccupations.  She was the devoted guardian of a sacred trust.  Her place was in the inmost shrine of the house of mourning—­where she alone had the right to enter, where she could feel the effluence of a mysterious presence, and interpret, however faintly and feebly, the promptings of a still living soul.  That, and that only was her glorious, her terrible duty.  For terrible indeed it was.  As the years passed her depression seemed to deepen and her loneliness to grow more intense.  “I am on a dreary sad pinnacle of solitary grandeur,” she said.  Again and again she felt that she could bear her situation no longer—­that she would sink under the strain.  And then, instantly, that Voice spoke:  and she braced herself once more to perform, with minute conscientiousness, her grim and holy task.

Above all else, what she had to do was to make her own the master-impulse of Albert’s life—­she must work, as he had worked, in the service of the country.  That vast burden of toil which he had taken upon his shoulders it was now for her to bear.  She assumed the gigantic load; and naturally she staggered under it.  While he had lived, she had worked, indeed, with regularity and conscientiousness; but it was work made easy, made delicious, by his care, his forethought, his advice, and his infallibility.  The mere sound of his voice, asking her to sign a paper, had thrilled her; in such a presence she could have laboured gladly for ever.  But now there was a hideous change.  Now there were no neat piles and docketings under the green lamp; now there were no simple explanations of difficult matters; now there was nobody to tell her what was right and what was wrong.  She had her secretaries, no doubt:  there were Sir Charles Phipps, and General Grey, and Sir Thomas Biddulph; and they did their best.  But they were mere subordinates:  the whole weight of initiative and responsibility rested upon her alone.  For so it had to be.  “I am determined”—­had she not declared it?—­“that no one person is to lead or guide or dictate to me;” anything else would be a betrayal of her trust.  She would follow the Prince in all things.  He had refused to delegate authority; he had examined into every detail with his own eyes; he had made it a rule never to sign a paper without having first, not merely read it, but made notes on it too.  She would do the same.  She sat from morning till night surrounded by huge heaps of despatch—­boxes, reading and writing at her desk—­at her desk, alas! which stood alone now in the room.