You are waiting to hear what was the matter with Edna. No, it was not a fake illness to draw me within reach for some further trimming. She had indeed fallen dangerously ill--did not expect to live when Margot telegraphed me. It was an intestinal fever brought on by the excesses of the London season. I wonder when the biographers, poets, playwrights, novelists, and other gentry who give us the annals of the race will catch up with the progress of science? How long will it be before they stop telling us of germ and filth diseases as if they were the romantic physical expressions of soul states? There was a time when such blunders were excusable. Now, science has shown us that they are so much twaddle. So, gentle reader, I cannot gratify your taste for humbug and moonshine by telling you that Edna was stricken of remorse or of overjoy or of secret grief or of any other soul state whatever. The doctor bosh was, of course, nervous exhaustion. It always is if the patient is above the working class. The truth was that she fell ill, even as you and I. She ate and drank too much, both at and between meals, and did not take proper care of herself in any way. She wore dresses that were nearly nothing in cold carriages and draughty rooms, when she was laden with undigested food. Vulgar--isn’t it? Revolting for me to speak thus of a lady? But I am trying to tell the truth, gentle reader, not to increase your stock of slop and lies which you call “culture.” And if a lady will put herself in such a condition, why should it not be spoken of? Why go on lying about these things, and encouraging people to attribute to sensitive nerves and souls the consequences of gluttony, ignorance, and neglect? I am not criticising Edna for getting into such an internal physical state that a pestilence began to rage within her. The most intelligent of us is only too foolish and ignorant in these matters, thanks to stupid education from childhood up. And she has the added excuse of having been exposed to the temptations of a London season. She fell; it is hardly in human nature not to fall.