n the presence of a third
person. Nevertheless, some knowledge of their close relationship leaked
out. Stella had been jealous of her rival during the years that Swift
spent in London. Vanessa was now told that Swift was married to the
other woman, or that she was his mistress. Writhing with jealousy, she
wrote directly to Stella, and asked whether she was Dean Swift's wife.
In answer Stella replied that she was, and then she sent Vanessa's
letter to Swift himself.

All the fury of his nature was roused in him; and he was a man who could
be very terrible when angry. He might have remembered the intense love
which Vanessa bore for him, the humility with which she had accepted his
conditions, and, finally, the loneliness of this girl.

But Swift was utterly unsparing. No gleam of pity entered his heart as
he leaped upon a horse and galloped out to Marley Abbey, where she was
living--"his prominent eyes arched by jet-black brows and glaring with
the green fury of a cat's." Reaching the house, he dashed into it, with
something awful in his looks, made his way to Vanessa, threw her letter
down upon the table and, after giving her one frightful glare, turned on
his heel, and in a moment more was galloping back to Dublin.

The girl fell to the floor in an agony of terror and remorse. She was
taken to her room, and only three weeks afterward was carried forth,
having died literally of a broken heart.

Five years later, Stella also died, withering away a sacrifice to
what the world has called Swift's cruel heartlessness and egotism. His
greatest public triumphs came to him in his final years of melancholy
isolation; but in spite of the applause that greeted The Drapier Letters
and Gulliver's Travels, he brooded morbidly over his past life. At last
his powerful mind gave way, so that he died a victim to senile dementia.
By his directions his body was interred in the same coffin with
Stella's, in the cathedral of which he had been dean.

Such is the story of Dean Swift, and it has always suggested several
curious questions. Why, if he loved Stella, did he not marry her long
before? Why, when he married her, did he treat her still as if she were
not his wife? Why did he allow Vanessa's love to run like a scarlet
thread across the fabric of the other affection, which must have been so
strong?

Many answers have been given to these questions. That which was
formulated by Sir Walter Scott is a simple one, and has been generally