When Bella returned home early the next morning, he looked at her with a ghostlike countenance: he perceived the coldness and hardness of her face.
"Medusa, Medusa!" shrieked Clodwig.
Without knowing he had uttered the words, he fell back on the pillows.
They restored him to consciousness. Hours of the severest pain elapsed before the Doctor came. Clodwig had also desired Eric to be sent for.
The Doctor came, and declared Clodwig to be dangerously sick; the jury trial had excited him too violently, and the drive home through the rain—"and perhaps something else," he added to Bella, who gazed at him without changing a muscle of her face.
Bella sent for her brother; but no one knew precisely where he was.
"I am lonely," said she, too.
She was terrified when she said this; for she felt that she would soon be really alone.