One day, when speaking to her brother, in allusion to her earlier good health and plumpness, Fanny observed: ‘My dear St. George, I have been imprudent.’ She did not specify what manner of imprudence hers had been. Probably, like many another in a thoroughly healthy family, she had not soon enough read the true meaning of suspicious symptoms. During some four years past she had been steadily failing; and the end could but have been a joyous release to one so ready to go.