Leeds told the cocktail story over and over again and Mrs. Leeds chaffed him publicly about having admired “that woman” in Egypt. Away from Cross Loman probably they magnified their acquaintance with Mrs. Harter, wherever the notoriety of her name had penetrated, into an intimacy. Leeds, in particular, was like that. Mrs. Fazackerly, to whom, after all, the shock of the accident had been a double one, behaved very gallantly. She attended the inquest, and she actually saw the father of Bill Patch and talked with him about his son. Neither of them referred to Mrs. Harter at all. Then Mrs. Fazackerly put Loman Cottage into the hands of the house agents, stored all her belongings and came to us. Claire, who is at her best in a crisis, went herself to fetch her. The last of her opposition to Christopher’s marriage went by the board when poor Nancy, her final responsibilities over, had a bad nervous breakdown. Claire nursed her. “Poor little thing,” said Claire. “Women who have never really suffered are very apt to go to pieces when the first contact with reality comes. I could never do that myself. One is as one’s made, of course. I suppose that very few women of my years have been called upon to go through all that I have gone through in my life. But I’ve never broken down yet. If I had, I suppose that I should have gone mad by this time.” She did not make that speech in front of Christopher, and her care of Nancy was rewarded by Christopher’s rather inarticulate, but quite evident, gratitude and admiration. As soon as possible, Christopher Ambrey and Mrs. Fazackerly were married, very quietly indeed, in London, and he took her away to the South of France. He was to rejoin his regiment abroad early in the following year, and she, of course, was going with him. The last thing she said to me--and her childlike eyes regained their radiance as she said it--was: “It’s the most wonderful chance of beginning life all over again that anyone was ever given. The things that used to worry me need never worry me again, and I shan’t ever be frightened any more.” And with that--the last reference that I ever heard her make to the past--one felt that the old ghosts of those oft-quoted rages of Fazackerly, thrower of plates, and the tyrannies of old Carey, and his eternal criminological discussions, were laid for ever. Even the rather strenuous economies that had for so long been part and parcel of life at Loman Cottage melted away of themselves in Nancy’s determination that Christopher should be as happy as she was herself. As far as I know, both of them continue to be happy, in their own way, and according to their own capacity for happiness. They will be a great deal abroad, for some years to come, and Claire is gradually turning the battery of her correspondence on to Nancy instead of Christopher. Nancy’s replies are far more adequate than Christopher’s ever were.