Florence's heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to ensure that he did not seek intimacy from her as it would seemingly be too stressful for her heart, and to keep him out of her bedroom at night so that she could continue her affair with a French artist named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have an imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and heart) and Leonora's attempts to control Edward's affairs (both financial and romantic). Dowell is an innocent and is coming to realise how much he has been fooled, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without John knowing until Florence was dead.