At Lady Burton’s request, Mr. Albert Letchford and Miss Letchford had come to stay with her “for the remembrance of the love her husband bore them.”  It fell to Miss Letchford to sort Sir Richard’s clothes and to remove the various trifles from his pockets.  She found, among other things, the little canvas bags containing horse-chestnuts, which, as we have already noticed, he used “to carry about with him against the Evil Eye—­as a charm to keep him from sickness.”

Lady Burton now commenced with the manuscripts—­and let it be conceded, with the very best intentions.  She would have nobody in the room but Miss Letchford.  “I helped Lady Burton to sort his books, papers, and manuscripts,” says Miss Letchford.  “She thought me too young and innocent to understand anything.  She did not suspect that often when she was not near I looked through and read many of those MSS. which I bitterly repent not having taken, for in that case the world would not have been deprived of many beautiful and valuable writings.  I remember a poem of his written in the style of ‘The House that Jack built,’ the biting sarcasm of which, the ironical finesse—­is beyond anything I have ever read.  Many great people still living found their way into these verses.  I begged Lady Burton to keep it, but her peasant confessor said ‘Destroy it,’ so it was burnt along with a hundred other beautiful things.”  She destroyed valuable papers,[FN#648] she carefully preserved and docketed as priceless treasures mere waste paper.[FN#649]

There now remained only the manuscript of The Scented Garden and a few other papers.  By this time Lady Burton had discovered that Miss Letchford was “not so ignorant as she thought,” and when the latter begged her not to destroy The Scented Garden she promised that it should be saved; and no doubt, she really intended to save it.  Miss Letchford having gone out for the evening, Lady Burton returned again to her task.  Her mind was still uneasy about The Scented Garden, and she took out the manuscript to examine it.  Of the character of the work she had some idea, though her husband had not allowed her to read it.  Fifteen hundred persons had promised subscriptions; and she had also received an offer of six thousand guineas for it from a publisher.[FN#650] She took out the manuscript and laid it on the floor, “two large volumes worth."[FN#651] When she opened it she was perfectly bewildered and horrified.  The text alone would have staggered her, but, as we have seen, Burton had trebled the size of the book with notes of a certain character.  Calming herself, she reflected that the book was written only for scholars and mainly for Oriental students, and that her husband “never wrote a thing from the impure point of view.  He dissected a passion from every point of view, as a doctor may dissect a body, showing its source, its origin, its evil, and its good."[FN#652]

Then she looked up, and there, before her, stood her husband just as he had stood in the flesh.  He pointed to the manuscript and said “Burn it!” Then he disappeared.