Florence's affair with Edward leads her to commit suicide when she realises both that Edward is falling in love with his and Leonora's young ward, Nancy Rufford, and that Dowell has found out about her affair with Jimmy. Florence sees Edward and Nancy in an intimate conversation and rushes back to the resort, where she sees John talking to a man she used to know (and who knows of her affair with Jimmy). Assuming that her relationship with Edward and her marriage to John are over, Florence takes prussic acid—which she has carried for years in a vial that John thought held her heart medicine—and dies.