"Good heavens! my dear sir, how could the woman love a madman?"
"You use strong language. When I parted with him in June, he was as sane as you or I."
"Well, then, apparently, he lost his mind in the interval. He was in wretched health.
"But a man doesn't lose his mind without a cause."
"Let us admit, then," said the major, "that Miss Congreve was the cause. I insist that she was the innocent cause. How should she have trifled with him? She was engaged to another man. The ways of the Lord are inscrutable. Fortunately," continued the Major, "she doesn't know the worst."
"How, the worst?"
"Why, you know he shot himself."
"Bless your soul. Miss Congreve knows it."
"I think you're mistaken. She didn't know it this morning."
Philip was sickened and bewildered by the tissue of horrors in which he found himself entangled. "Oh," he said, bitterly, "she has forgotten it then. She knew it a month ago."
"No, no, no," rejoined the major, with decision. "I took the liberty, this morning, of calling upon her, and as we had had some conversation upon Mr. Graham at Sharon, I touched upon his death. I saw she had heard of it, and I said nothing more—"
"Well then?" said Philip.
"Well, then, my dear sir, she thinks he died in his bed. May she never think otherwise!"
In the course of that night—he sat out on deck till two o'clock, alone—Philip, revolving many things, fervently echoed this last wish of Major Dodd.
Aux grands maux les grands remèdes. Philip is now a married man; and curious to narrate, his wife bears a striking likeness to the young lady whose photograph he purchased for the price of six dozen of his own. And yet her name is not Angelica Thompson—nor even Dora.
Henry James, Jr.
