Ultima Thule by Henry Handel Richardson — Read

The postman handed in a letter with a mourning border fully an inch wide: there was barely room for name and address, which were squeezed in anyhow. It was from Mr. Henry; and opening it in some trepidation Mary read the sad news of Agnes's death. Mr. Henry was kind enough to give her full particulars. Agnes had, it seemed, stood the voyage out well. But on landing at the Cape she had met with an accident; had caught her foot in a rope and fallen heavily; and the shock had brought on an apoplexy from which she never rallied. Mr. Henry wrote as one bereft of all he held dear; as the fond father whose pious duty it would henceforth be, to fill a mother's place to his orphaned children. In reading the letter aloud, Mary swallowed hard; then veiled her discomfort with an apologetic: "Oh well, you know. poor man,. I daresay----" by which she meant to imply that, with death's entry on the scene, the realities were apt to get overlaid. Mr. Henry saw himself and his situation, not as they were, but as he would have wished them to be.

Richard, of course, sniffed at Ocock's layman-ish account of his wife's end. And he was right. For Tilly's gloss on the affair ran: PURD HEARD FROM A MAN WHO WAS ON BOARD THE SAME SHIP. IT'S TRUE SHE DID TRIP OVER A ROPE AND COME A CROPPER (AND NOT THE FIRST TIME NEITHER, AS WE KNOW) AND THIS BROUGHT ON A VIOLENT ATTACK OF D.T. 'S WHICH CARRIED HER OFF: HENRY HASN'T LOOKED THE SAME MAN SINCE. HIS RELIEF IS IMMENSE--SIMPLY IMMENSE.