FullReads

But the lady had had the interview–two of them–and this was all she wanted. Letters followed, and this developed into a daily correspondence, wherein the old lady revealed the story of her passion–a passion as delicate, earnest and all-devouring as ever a girl of twenty knew. Insane, you say? Well, ah–yes, doubtless. But then, love is illusion; perhaps life is illusion, a very beautiful rainbow, and why old folks should not be allowed to chase it, or allow sweet emotion to gurgle gleefully under their lee, a bit, as well as young folks, I do not know. Then, really, is love simply a physical manifestation and do spirits grow old? If so, where is our belief in the immortality of the soul?

Mrs. Willyums was childless, had long been a widow, was rich, and her heart had been in the grave until she began to trace the record of Disraeli. She was a recluse: read, studied, fed on Disraeli–loved him. After several years of dreaming and planning she had actually bagged the game. She was a woman of education and ideas. Her letters were interesting–and Disraeli’s letters to her, now published, reveal the history of his daily life as he never told it to another. At her death the bulk of Mrs. Willyum’s fortune went by will to Disraeli.

But Mrs. Disraeli was not jealous of this affection. Why should a woman of sixty be jealous of another woman the same age? They pooled their love and grew rich together in recounting it. Presents were going backward and forward all the time between Disraeli’s country home and Torquay. Mrs. Willyums next came to live at Hughenden. There she died, and there she sleeps, side by side, as was her wish, with Benjamin Disraeli, Lord Privy Seal, Earl Beaconsfield of Beaconsfield, Viscount Hughenden of Hughenden. And the reason the Ex-Premier was not buried in Westminster Abbey was because he had promised these two women that even death should not separate them from him. So there under the spreading elms, in this out-of-the-way country place, they rest–these three, side by side, and the sighing breeze tells and tells again to the twittering birds in the branches, of this triple love, strange as fate, strong as destiny, warm as life, pure as snow, and unselfish as the kiss of the summer sun.