Here a gap intervenes, which record fills up with but an indication here and there. Swift saw Vanessa, sometimes with that "something awful in his looks which struck her dumb," sometimes with words of perplexed kindness; he persuaded her to go out, to read, to amuse herself; he introduced clergymen to her--one of them afterwards Archbishop of Cashel--as suitors for her hand; he induced her to leave Dublin, and go to her property at Selbridge, about twelve miles from Dublin, where now and then he went to visit her, where she used to plant laurels against every time of his coming, and where "Vanessa's bower," in which she and the Dean used to sit, with books and writing materials before them, during those happy visits, was long an object of interest to tourists; he wrote kindly letters to her, some in French, praising her talents, her conversation, and her writing, and saying that he found in her "_tout ce que la nature a donnée à un mortel, l'honneur, la vertu, le bon sens, l'esprit, la douceur, l'agrément et la fermeté d'âme_." All did not suffice; and one has to fancy, during those long years, the restless beatings, on the one hand, of that impassioned woman's heart, now lying as cold undistinguishable ashes in some Irish grave, and, on the other hand, the distraction, and anger, and daily terror, of the man she clung to. For, somehow or other, there _was_ an element of terror mingled with the affair. What it was is beyond easy scrutiny, though possibly the data exist if they were well sifted. The ordinary story is that some time in the midst of those entanglements with Vanessa, and in consequence of their effects on the rival-relationship--Stella having been brought almost to death's door by the anxieties caused her by Vanessa's proximity, and by her own equivocal position in society--the form of marriage was gone through by Swift and Stella, and they became legally husband and wife, although with an engagement that the matter should remain secret, and that there should be no change in their manner of living. The year 1716, when Swift was forty-nine years of age, and Stella thirty-two, is assigned as the date of this event; and the ceremony is said to have been performed in the garden of the deanery by the Bishop of Clogher. But more mystery remains. "Immediately subsequent to the ceremony," says Sir Walter Scott, "Swift's state of mind appears to have been dreadful. Delany (as I have learned from a friend of his widow) said that about the time it was supposed to have taken place he observed Swift to be extremely gloomy and agitated--so much so that he went to Archbishop King to mention his apprehensions. On entering the library, Swift rushed out with a countenance of distraction, and passed him without speaking. He found the archbishop in tears, and, upon asking the reason, he said, 'You have just met the most unhappy man on earth; but on the subject of his wretchedness you must never ask a question.'" What are we to make of this? Nay more,