Chapter 11 Summary

Mrs. Wilcox is now dead. Some of the townspeople say she had not looked well for some time and others say it was going to London that did the woman in. They don't know what her family now knows, that Mrs. Wilcox had been ill for awhile but kept it a secret so an not to distress her family. Death is such an unpleasant topic. The dead woman's family is devastated and her husband remembers her faithfulness and her virtue. All her life, he could count on her.

Soon a letter arrives announcing something that Mr. Wilcox could have never imagined. Mrs. Wilcox has left Howards End to Meg Schlegel. The handwritten note has come in the morning's mail and has sidelined the family's grief into shock and bewilderment. They immediately consider scenarios of its legality, of her state of mind, and the...