He did not learn the fact till many years after.
It soon transpired that she had been out of her mind for some time.
Indeed rumours of the sort had been afloat before. The proximate cause
of her insanity was not certainly known. Some suspicion of the
worthlessness of her lover, some enlightenment as to his perfidy, or
his unaccountable disappearance alone, may have occasioned its
manifestation. But there is great reason to believe that she had a
natural predisposition to it. And having never been taught to provide
for her own mental sustenance, and so nourish a necessary independence,
she had been too ready to squander the wealth of a rich and lovely
nature upon an unworthy person, and the reaction had been madness and
death. But anything was better than marrying Beauchamp.
One strange fact in the case was her inexplicable aversion to
water???-either a crude prevision of her coming fate, or, in the
mysterious operations of delirious reasoning, the actual cause of it.
The sea, visible from her window over the dreary flat of the links, may
have fascinated her, and drawn her to her death. Such cases are not
unknown.
During the worst period of Alec's illness, he was ever wandering along
that shore, or swimming in those deadly waters.
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