Now, about that irony. Remember Florence and Edward, the wayward spouses with heart trouble? Just what, you ask, is wrong with their hearts? Not a thing in the world. Physically, that is. Faithlessness, selfishness, cruelty—those things are wrong, and ultimately those things kill them. But physically, their hearts are completely sound. So why did I say earlier they suffer from heart disease? Haven’t I just violated the principle of this chapter? Not really. Their choice of illness is quite telling: each of them elects to employ a fragile heart as a device to deceive the respective spouse, to
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Their "heart disease" refers to the ugliness of their hearts, their cruelty as people.
