The Good News finally snagged him. In late September 1881, he was near the end, bedridden, languishing in a soft purple robe, still able to read, though he always preferred to be read to. Lady Hope entered the drawing room at the top of the stairs quietly, respectfully, as the golden hour gently illuminated corn fields and English oak forests through his picturesque bay window. The faintest crown of white hair encircled his head in the late afternoon light; the rest was wizardly beard (Figure 6.1). Lady Hope, the well-known evangelist, was visiting the Darwins, and she approached the old scientist cautiously. But she needn’t have. In his wrinkled hands he held the Bible, open to the New Testament Epistle of Hebrews. “The Royal Book,” Darwin called it, serenely, mentioning a few favored passages.