nor can I say she is
better.... The days pass in a slow, dull march: the nights are the test;
the sudden wakings from restless sleep, the revived knowledge that one
lies in her grave, and another, not at my side, but in a separate and
sick bed." And again in March: "Anne's decline is gradual and
fluctuating, but its nature is not doubtful." And yet again in April:
"If there were no hope beyond this world ... Emily's fate, and that
which threatens Anne, would be heartbreaking. I cannot forget Emily's
death-day; it becomes a more fixed, a darker, a more frequently
recurring idea in my mind than ever. It was very terrible. She was torn,
conscious, panting, reluctant, though resolute, out of a happy life."

Mrs. Oliphant has censured Emily Bronte for the manner of her dying. She
might as well have censured Anne for drawing out the agony. For Anne was
gentle to the end, utterly submissive. She gave death no trouble. She
went, with a last hope, to Scarborough, and died there at the end of
May. She was buried at Scarborough, where she lies alone. It is not easy
to believe that she had no "preference for place", but there is no doubt
that even to that choice of her last resting-place she would have
submitted--gently.

"I got here a little before eight o'clock. All was clean and bright,
waiting for me. Papa and the servants were well, and all received me
with an affection that should have consoled. The dogs seemed in strange
ecstasy. I am certain that they regarded me as the harbinger of others.
The dumb creatures thought that as I was returned, those who had been so
long absent were not far behind.... I felt that the house was all
silent, the rooms were all empty. I remembered where the three were
laid--in what narrow, dark dwellings--never more to reappear on
earth.... I cannot help thinking of their last days, remembering their
sufferings, and what they said and did, and how they looked in mortal
affliction.... To sit in a lonely room, the clock ticking loud through a
still house...." Charlotte could see nothing else before her.

It was July. She had come home after a visit to Miss Nussey.

In that month she wrote that chapter of _Shirley_ which is headed "The
Valley of the Shadow". The book (begun more than eighteen months before)
fairly quivers with the shock that cut it in two.

It was finished somewhere in September of that year of Anne's death.
Charlotte went up to London. She saw Thackeray. She learned to accept
th