What is a man to do for the best?
She raves at me sometimes like a maniac for not having taken her away ere the scourge spread as it is doing now.
But when I tell her that if she is bent upon it she must e'en go now, she cries out that nothing would induce her to set her foot outside the house.

She sits with the curtains and shutters fast closed, and a fire of spices on the hearth, till one is fairly stifled, and will touch nothing that is not well-nigh soaked in vinegar.

And each time that Frederick comes in with some fresh tale, she is like to swoon with fear, and every time she vows that it is the pestilence attacking her, and is like to die from sheer fright.

What is a man to do with such a wife and such a son ?" "Surely Frederick will cease to repeat tales of horror when he sees they so alarm his mother," said Rachel; but the Master Builder shook his head with an air of more than doubt.
"It seems his delight to torment her with terror; and she appears almost equally eager to hear all, though it almost scares her out of her senses.

As for Gertrude, the child is pining like a caged bird shut up in the house and not suffered to stir into the fresh air.