Meantime old and dear friends gathered around her and sought to comfort and encourage her. She preserved many letters which she prized and had found helpful. One of the first to speak was the Rev. H. Browne, who held the living of Pevensey. He was one of the Bishop's chaplains, the author of _Ordo Sæclorum_, a student of German theology, and, that which most attracted Bessie, he was a very good reader, and at Chichester had often read aloud Shakespere's plays to the _sisterhood_. Mr. Browne now was the first to strike a note to which she could respond:
He rests from his labours and his works do follow him. Yours remain. It is needless for me to say it, for you must all know it better than I, he counted it among his mercies that a work had been raised up for you, which when father and mother were gone would be to you the work and the blessing of your life. He evidently acknowledged this as God's calling to you, and as one of the thoughts in which he was greatly comforted in looking forward upon your future life.
Many other writers dwelt upon the unsparing labour and self-denying zeal of her father, and all recognised that she, the daughter so near his heart and always the object of his most tender love and watchful care, must be the one most deeply stricken by the pain of separation.
"To you, I imagine, the blow will come heaviest," wrote Mrs. Powell; and this sentiment is repeated in almost every letter.
A letter from the Secretary of her own Association, informing her of a vote of condolence passed by the Committee, begins, oddly enough, with
The blind workmen and workwomen did their best to express their regret at the death of "his lordship the Bishop," and a note is enclosed to her by the Rev. B. Hayley, written by a poor fellow in the Chichester Union, "just to show what the poor, the very poorest in the diocese, think of your dear father."
The Rev. Dr. Swainson, Canon of Chichester, now Master of Christ's College, Cambridge, heard that Bessie's grief was heightened by the fact that she had spent the last fortnight before her father's death in London, engrossed by the work of the Deputation to Lord de Grey. His letter of sympathy and consolation may be as helpful to others as it was to her, and it is therefore inserted unabridged.