But in November, 1880, when he was eighty-five, and Mrs.Carlyle had been fourteen years in her grave, he asked what Froude really meant to do with the letters and the memoir.

Forced to make up his mind at once, and believing that publication was Carlyle's own wish, he replied that he meant to publish them.

The old man seemed to be satisfied, and no more was said.

Froude drew the inference that most people would, in the circumstances, have drawn.

He concluded that Carlyle wished to relieve himself of responsibility, to get the matter off his mind, to have no disclosure in his lifetime, but to die with the assurance that after his death the whole story of his wife's heroism would be told.
On the 4th of February, 1881, Carlyle died.