Then Miss Vanhomrigh--after the death of her mother--must needs come over--to the great perplexity of the Doctor--to a little country place which she has inherited in the pretty valley of the Liffey--a short drive away from Dublin; she has a fine house there, and beautiful gardens (Swift never outgrew his old Moor-Park love for gardens); there she receives him, and honors his visits. An old gardener, who was alive in Scott’s time, told how they planted a laurel bush whenever the Dean came. Perhaps the Dean was too blinded for fine reading in the garden alleys then; certainly his fierce headaches were shaking him year by year nearer to the grave. Miss Hester comes to a knowledge of these visits, and is tortured, but silent. Has she a right to nurse torture? Some biographers say that at her urgence a form of marriage was solemnized between them (1716); but if so, it was undeclared and unregarded. Vanessa, too, has her tortures; she has knowledge of Stella and her friend, and of their attitude with respect to the deanery; so, in a moment of high, impetuous daring, she writes off to Mistress Hester Johnson asking what rights she has over her friend the Dean? Poor Stella wilts at this blow; but is stirred to an angry woman’s reply, making (it is said) avowal of the secret marriage. To the Dean, who is away, she encloses Vanessa’s letter; and the Dean comes storming back; rages across the country, carrying to Miss Vanhomrigh her own letter--flings it upon the table before her, with that look of blackness that has made duchesses tremble--turns upon his heel, and sees her no more. In a fortnight, or thereabout, Poor Vanessa was dead. It was a fever they said; may be; certainly, if a fever, there were no hopes in her life now which could make great head against it. She changed her will before her death, cutting off Swift, who was sole legatee, and leaving one-half to Bishop Berkeley; through whom, strangely enough, Yale College may be said to inherit a part of poor Vanessa’s fortune.[115] Such a blow, by its side bruises, must needs scathe somewhat the wretched Hester Johnson; but time brought a little healing in its wings. The old kindliness and friendship that dated from the pleasant walks in Moor Park, came back--as rosy twilights will sometimes shoot kindly gleams between stormy days, and the blackness of night. And Swift, I think, never came nearer to insupportable grief than when he heard--on an absence in London, a few years thereafter--that Stella was dying week by week.