He made some excuses for departure, and writhed to see that they were greeted eagerly.

The first gleam of joy he had detected since that fatal night, on Adela's face, he beheld when he murmured "Farewell." He travelled for some weeks through the wildest parts of Scotland; scenery which MAKES the artist, was loveless to his haggard eyes.

A letter recalled him to London on the wings of new agony and fear; he arrived to find his sister in a condition both of mind and health which exceeded his worst apprehensions.
Her vacant look, her lifeless posture, appalled him; it was as one who gazed on the Medusa's head, and felt, without a struggle, the human being gradually harden to the statue.

It was not frenzy, it was not idiocy,--it was an abstraction, an apathy, a sleep in waking.

Only as the night advanced towards the eleventh hour--the hour in which Glyndon had concluded his tale--she grew visibly uneasy, anxious, and perturbed.
Then her lips muttered; her hands writhed; she looked round with a look of unspeakable appeal for succour, for protection, and suddenly, as the clock struck, fell with a shriek to the ground, cold and lifeless.