What followed on that dreadful day no one ever knew clearly. Poor Mary, out of her brooding and miserable madness, which yet everybody hoped might in time have dispersed, as the shock and horror that produced it died away from her brain, became for a time acutely, terribly mad, striving to hide herself from the light of day, haunted by a horror of her enemy, who was forever pursuing her, ready to clutch at her at the door. Her confused brain caught this one point of reality and never relinquished it. Letitia was always at the door to Mary’s terrified and distorted fancy. Her voice was always there, saying, “I will go in.” Every time the door opened there was a fresh access of the wildest terror, which lasted through days and nights, so dreadful to the watchers, that they could not tell how long it lasted or how often the long day ended in a night full of alarm and terror. Poor old Lord Frogmore--such a picture of an old gentleman; so active, so brisk, so well, doing everything that younger men could do--fell into pathetic ruin, lost his color, his strength, his spirits, and became an old man in that week of misery. The old vicar from Grocombe and his wife, who came hurrying to the Park, with the idea that the near relations should always be collected on such an emergency, added to the trouble by their unnecessary presence; for Mrs. Hill, who was not to be kept out of her daughter’s room, had to be removed from it periodically in a state of utter prostration, from which it required all the care of Agnes to restore her; and the vicar himself stood about in the hall or the library staring at everybody who went and came; asking in a hoarse whisper, “Is she any better?” and always in the way.