Lady Flora Hastings died in London on July 5, 1839, at the age of thirty-three, from a liver tumor after a period of abdominal pain, swelling, and progressive wasting. Her illness became entangled with the rivalries surrounding the young Queen Victoria and the Duchess of Kent, whose household Flora served. The abdominal enlargement was wrongly interpreted as pregnancy, giving rise to damaging rumors about John Conroy. A medical examination established that she was not pregnant, but did not undo the public humiliation. As her condition deteriorated, the underlying tumor explained the swelling that had been treated as evidence of misconduct. Victoria visited the visibly dying woman on June 27, little more than a week before her death. Flora's sister Sophia was associated with her care, and the family later challenged the court's handling of the affair. Flora was buried at Loudoun. The documented end is both a fatal physical illness and a scandal in which mistaken assumptions worsened the patient's distress; the rumors should not be repeated as facts. Precise final words and every detail of the treatment are not securely established. Her sister's later publication of her poems preserved another part of a life otherwise overshadowed by the circumstances of her death.