"Her husband's, not her own: driven wild by his."
"You really mean," I persisted, "that she couldn't endure to live any longer because her husband loved her so much that he couldn't bear anybody else to love her too?"
"In some such measure," replied Mrs Bowater, "though I don't say he didn't help the other way round. But she was a wild, scattering creature. It was just her way. The less she cared, the more they flocked. She couldn't collect herself, and say, 'Here I am; who are you?' so to speak. Ah, miss, it's a sickly and dangerous thing to be too much admired."
"But you said 'scattering': was she mad a little?"
"No. Peculiar, perhaps, with her sidelong, startled look. A lovelier I've never seen."
"You've seen her!"
"Thirty years ago, perhaps. Alive and dead."
"Oh, Mrs Bowater, poor thing, poor thing."
"That you may well say, for lovely in the latter finding she was not."