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WIVES OF THE PRIME MINISTERS was a merciful thing, for she was thus spared the knowledge that one of her sons, Lord Edward Cecil, was shut up in Mafeking, and that the family being unable to get news were in some anxiety about him. She died at Hatfield on 20th November 1899, and her death was a blow to her husband, from which it may be said that he never recovered. Her long illness had withdrawn her from her friends for some time before her death, but nevertheless the silencing of her vivid and positive personality came as a shock to many, and to a few with whom she had been intimate as one of the irreplaceable losses of their lives. She was buried at Hatfield, and four years later her husband was laid beside her. L. M. 232