to be galloped over, I can tell you. I
think it will come famously--but I am the wretchedest of the wretched.
It casts the most horrible shadow upon me, and it is as much as I can
do to keep moving at all. I tremble to approach the place a great deal
more than Kit; a great deal more than Mr. Garland; a great deal more
than the Single Gentleman. I sha'n't recover it for a long time. Nobody
will miss her like I shall. It is such a very painful thing to me, that
I really cannot express my sorrow. Old wounds bleed afresh when I only
think of the way of doing it: what the actual doing it will be, God
knows. I can't preach to myself the schoolmaster's consolation, though I
try. Dear Mary died yesterday, when I think of this sad story. I don't
know what to say about dining to-morrow--perhaps you'll send up
to-morrow morning for news? That'll be the best way. I have refused
several invitations for this week and next, determining to go nowhere
till I had done. I am afraid of disturbing the state I have been trying
to get into, and having to fetch it all back again." He had finished,
all but the last chapter, on the Wednesday named; that was the 12th of
January; and on the following night he read to me the two chapters of
Nell's death, the seventy-first and seventy-second, with the result
described in a letter to me of the following Monday, the 17th January,
1841:

"I can't help letting you know how much your yesterday's letter pleased
me. I felt sure you liked the chapters when we read them on Thursday
night, but it was a great delight to have my impression so strongly and
heartily confirmed. You know how little value I should set on what I had
done, if all the world cried out that it was good, and those whose good
opinion and approbation I value most were silent. The assurance that
this little closing of the scene touches and is felt by you so strongly,
is better to me than a thousand most sweet voices out of doors. When I
first began, _on your valued suggestion_, to keep my thoughts upon this
ending of the tale, I resolved to try and do something which might be
read by people about whom Death had been, with a softened feeling, and
with consolation. . . . After you left last night, I took my desk
up-stairs, and, writing until four o'clock this morning, finished the
old story. It makes me very melancholy to think that all these people
are lost to me forever, and I feel as if I never could become attached
to any new set of charac