MORE FROM the kitchen of her tiny bungalow, Frances Shand Kydd makes the short walk to the sittingroom. Even with the walking frame on which she is now almost entirely dependent, it is a slow, painful shuffle, the effort of the few steps etched on her face.

Having been through some tumultuous events in her life, the mother of Princess Diana is now facing perhaps her biggest personal battle. And it is one she must face alone.

Mrs Shand Kydd, 68, has been struck down with an incurable brain disease which has left her struggling to speak or walk.

Her son and two surviving daughters are said to be so concerned about her failing health that they have pleaded with her to leave her home on Seil Island, near Oban, and move closer to the Spencer family seat in Althorp, Northamptonshire.

But Mrs Shand Kydd, headstrong as ever, has refused - insisting she will remain in her beloved Scotland until the day she dies. 'I do not have a drop of English blood in me,' she says. 'I am half-Scottish and I hope that through Seil I have become a true Scot.

'Diana loved Seil. She really liked the people. All my children love it here and all my grandchildren have been here. I couldn't leave it. Despite all that's happened to me recently, it is still where my heart is and always will be.' She stubbornly refuses to reveal exactly what is wrong with her, other than to say that it is 'not a stroke or any other lifethreatening disease'.

Her condition was diagnosed after a brain scan revealed she had a progressive disease affecting the muscles.

Amid widespread speculation that it may be Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, friends will only say its progress has become 'rapid'.

Indeed, Mrs Shand Kydd's deterioration is painfully apparent. Though still undeniably elegant and carefully madeup, the strain has left her looking far older than her years, a woman seemingly worn down by life.

It is a life that, like her daughter's, has been marred by disappointment, sadness and regret.

Deserted by the man for whom she gave up everything, she was vilified as the 'bolter' who abandoned her family, and so lost custody of her children.

Then, still grieving for her firstborn son, who died in infancy, she suffered the sudden and traumatic loss of her youngest daughter.

More recently, there has been a drink- drive conviction, a car crash she was lucky to survive and the theft of [pounds sterling]100,000 worth of jewellery from her home.

And now there is this illness, the final blow - particularly cruel as it came at a time when she appeared to have found, if not contentment, then a peace of sorts.

Yet friends say she is determined to overcome this latest trauma and bounce back, just as she has always tried to do with everything life has thrown at her.

Catholic faith has been a great source of comfort. Since her conversion seven years ago, she has became a regular worshipper at St Columba's Church.

During the bad times, she has increasingly turned to her religion for help.

Since her illness, the local parish priest has been a frequent visitor.

In an effort to stay fit, she has apparently given up smoking and drinking.

But there has been no self-pity or rage over her situation. At least, not in public.

'I have to confront and accept the limitations of the condition I have,' she says.

'It took a while to diagnose but I feel it is my business to keep to myself.

It's nothing to do with anyone else.' But in her house on Seil, her home for almost three decades, there must surely be moments of deep despair. The lights in her home burn late into the night.

During the long, lonely hours until daybreak, there is ample time to contemplate her extraordinary past and uncertain future.

She has, perhaps unfairly, been painted as a cold and distant mother who walked out on her husband, Earl Spencer, and young children for her lover, the wallpaper heir Peter Shand Kydd. Diana was only six at the time.

In the bitter custody battle that followed, her own mother, Ruth, Lady Fermoy, crucially gave evidence against her. She lost.

Frances viewed it as a 'betrayal' and scarcely spoke to her mother for 12 years.

How ironic, then, that she herself had not spoken to her own daughter for four months before her death in a car crash in Paris. It is a wound that must still be raw.

The pair had fallen out over an interview Mrs Shand Kydd had given, in which she spoke about Diana's childhood and her battle with bulimia.

A series of conciliatory letters had been returned, unopened.

How badly, you wonder, must she still be haunted by the telephone call in August 1997 that woke her at 2am, informing her of the crash.

As a young woman, Mrs Shand Kydd had been deprived of seeing her baby son John, who died hours after being born with a lung defect. Then her daughter was taken from her without a final embrace.

'I did not see or touch or hold either of them when they were dead,' she says. 'I ache about it.

'After all these years, the pain never goes away. Losing a child is than once, Mrs Shand Kydd has said that she 'accepts' the decision of the French investigation that the crash which killed her daughter was an accident.

She is also said to be 'upset and very annoyed' over a forthcoming ITV documentary that accuses her and the Princess of Wales's sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale - both principal executors of Diana's estate - of deliberately disregarding her wishes for her 17 godchildren included in her will.

At such times, Mrs Shand Kydd must wish for the presence of a comforting male shoulder to lean on. It has been 18 years since her second husband - the man she adored and trusted - left her for a younger woman, champagne expert Marie-Pierre Palmer.

It was a harrowing time. She was inconsolable and admits it took her more than four years to recover.

'Peter and I drifted apart,' she says. 'I thought if I tried hard enough we'd find calmer waters.

Well, we didn't.

'I had become Di's mum and not Peter's wife. The pressure of it all was overwhelming and finally impossible for him. To say that is not self-pity or excuses, it is fact.' Friends say she never got over losing him. When he left, she became a virtual recluse, seeking comfort in alcohol - possibly, on RAT H occasion, more than was wise.

Many nights were spent in tears, weeping at the injustice of it all.

She hated having to become a member of the Home Alone Club, as she now refers to it.

'I was very bad at it initially,' she admits. 'I'd never been alone until I was 50, not your most sparkling age at which to start living alone.

'But I got used to it. And I love it, I love the freedom to give my commitment to whatever I think I shall be doing or might be doing or would like to do.' She never gave up hope that Peter would come back to her, even when he remarried in 1991.

In recent years, she has devoted herself to charity work. Out of the loss of her youngest daughter, she discovered a purpose in helping others, just as Diana did.

Singlehandedly, she has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charity.

It was an extraordinary sight to witness a former countess and the mother of Diana, Princess of Wales, serving cups of tea to strangers as she did at a recent village fete. She later auctioned off a chance for four people to have a cream tea and a chat with her at her home - a prize won by a local farmer and his family.

She is also involved in the Pilgrimage Trust, which takes disabled children and adults to Lourdes. 'I find it a great privilege to be in the presence of the people we take to Lourdes,' she says.

'They are an inspiration that helps put life into perspective.

They have certainly helped me.' These activities are increasingly curtailed by her illness. Her condition causes tremors and slurred speech.

She is often forced to use a wheelchair.

'She doesn't get out much at all,' said a local on Seil. ' We rarely see her these days, since she became worse.

'She would pop down to her local pub, but I haven't seen her for ages.

Everyone is concerned and would do anything to help her.

She's very well-liked.' Once she was mistress of Althorp House, presiding over 13,000 acres, and moving in high society. These days, she cuts a frail, vulnerable figure.

Home is now a two-bedroom bungalow on top of a hill above the Atlantic.

Reached by a twisting track, with only one other home in sight, it is a bleak, desolate spot.

Only the addition of a sophisticated security system - electric fence, closed-circuit cameras and alarm - gives any hint as to the owner of the unimposing house.

Inside, a side table in the small sitting room is covered with photographs of Diana.

Nowadays, the woman who once entertained so lavishly is reduced to spending hours with only the television for company. A housekeeper comes in twice a week.

are the days when villagers would only glimpse her as a blur as she shot past in her car.

Her green Audi sits, unused, in the driveway.

A fiercely proud woman who loves good conversation, walking on the beach or fly-fishing for salmon, it must have been enormously hard for her to adjust.

Perhaps this accounts for her reluctance to welcome too many visitors into her home and her noticeable unwillingness to be seen in public of late. In November 2002, she had a narrow escape after a spectacular crash when her car skidded on an oil patch and flipped onto its roof. Only a 3ft stone wall stopped it plunging into a swollen river below.

She was breathalysed but the test is believed to have proved negative.

Four years earlier, she had been banned for a year after being caught two-and-a-half times over the drink-drive limit.

In March 2000, her Audi was found in a ditch near Oban. She later denied being in the car.

Then, while she was giving evidence at the trial of former royal butler Paul Burrell at the Old Bailey in November 2002, thieves ransacked her home and stole [pounds sterling]100,000 worth of gems. Among the pieces they stole were the pearl necklace she wore at Diana's wedding and a diamond brooch that had reportedly belonged to Mary, Queen of Scots.

Luckily, she had been wearing her most precious possession - a specially-commissioned ruby and sapphire ring made to remember the lives of Diana and John.

There has also been unwelcome attention from male admirers.

She was forced to move from her previous home, also on Seil, after a stalker threatened to kill her.

Another man, a Norwegian, is regularly in contact, claiming he is Diana's father.

ER more disturbingly, police had to be called after another man put a note through her front door saying: ' I am here. I am coming here.' She says: 'I would not be human if those mishaps had not left their mark, both physically and emotionally, but I have got over them.' Like Diana towards the end of her days, her mother has sought seclusion from public life. It is here, to the calm solitude of Seil Island, that Mrs Shand Kydd has chosen to escape.

'I think I've had a wonderful life,' she insists. 'Certainly, there have been lows. Certainly, there have been own goals. I think sadness only makes you more realistic about what life is. You take less for granted.

'It takes very little to make you happy if you've had real sadness.

It's a very enriching experience, really.

'I have loved, been loved and laughed a lot. And I still think life's wonderful.'