eatest book, and of what I think were his
happiest years.

We had never had such intimate confidences as in the interval since his
return from Paris; but these have been used in my narrative of the
childhood and boyish experiences, and what remain are incidental only.
Of the fragment of autobiography there also given, the origin has been
told; but the intention of leaving such a record had been in his mind,
we now see, at an earlier date; and it was the very depth of our
interest in the opening of his fragment that led to the larger design in
which it became absorbed. "I hardly know why I write this," was his own
comment on one of his personal revelations, "but the more than
friendship which has grown between us seems to force it on me in my
present mood. We shall speak of it all, you and I, Heaven grant, wisely
and wonderingly many and many a time in after years. In the meanwhile I
am more at rest for having opened all my heart and mind to you. . . . This
day eleven years, poor dear Mary died."[158]

That was written on the seventh of May 1848, but another sadness
impending at the time was taking his thoughts still farther back; to
when he trotted about with his little elder sister in the small garden
to the house at Portsea. The faint hope for her which Elliotson had
given him in Paris had since completely broken down; and I was to hear,
in less than two months after the letter just quoted, how nearly the end
was come. "A change took place in poor Fanny," he wrote on the 5th of
July, "about the middle of the day yesterday, which took me out there
last night. Her cough suddenly ceased almost, and, strange to say, she
immediately became aware of her hopeless state; to which she resigned
herself, after an hour's unrest and struggle, with extraordinary
sweetness and constancy. The irritability passed, and all hope faded
away; though only two nights before, she had been planning for 'after
Christmas.' She is greatly changed. I had a long interview with her
to-day, alone; and when she had expressed some wishes about the funeral,
and her being buried in unconsecrated ground" (Mr. Burnett's family were
dissenters), "I asked her whether she had any care or anxiety in the
world. She said No, none. It was hard to die at such a time of life, but
she had no alarm whatever in the prospect of the change; felt sure we
should meet again in a better world; and although they had said she
might rally for a time, did not really wish it.