Page:Jane Austen (Sarah Fanny Malden 1889).djvu/213

 able to keep off any serious return of illness." And about the same time she wrote to a niece, "I feel myself so much stronger than I was, and can so perfectly walk to Alton or back again without fatigue, that I hope to be able to do both when summer comes." Her hopes were never to be realised; but she took advantage of her comparative vigour to begin a fresh novel on January 27th, 1817, and was able to go on with it, with tolerable rapidity, till March 17th. This last unfinished attempt, which had not even received a title, has never been published in entenso, but extracts from it have been given, and a sketch of the plot as far as it was worked out. It is difficult to judge of any work in this way, but as far as it had gone there was no very attractive character in it. It is possible that, if health had been granted her, Jane Austen would have polished and improved upon the materials until the characters had become as real to us as the Bertrams and the Bennets; but by this time her alarming state had become evident to every member of the family, and when two of James Austen's daughters went to see her in April, the younger one records, "She was then keeping her room, but said she would see us; and we went up to her. She was in her dressing-gown, and was sitting quite like an invalid in an arm-chair, but she got up and kindly greeted us, and then, pointing to seats which had been arranged for us by the fire, she said, 'There is a chair for the married lady and a little stool for you, Caroline.' It is strange, but those trifling words were the last of hers that I can remember, for I retain no recollection of what was said by anyone in the conversation that ensued. I was struck by the alteration in herself. She was