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 accepted. Scott believed that Swift was physically
incapacitated for marriage, and that he needed feminine sympathy,