When she reached her room, Gloria found herself shivering with a violent chill that all the warmth of her heart could not subdue. Burroughs was instantly alarmed. She summoned Gloria's father, who was even more alarmed. He made her go to bed at once, ordered her covered with many blankets, and had hot-water bottles filled.
The chill did not abate. In a panic, he telephoned from Gloria's own room to his old family physician, Doctor Wakefield, and was fortuitous enough to reach him and be assured of his immediate attendance. Doctor Wakefield was a fussy medical man of the very old school. He had taken good care of the Stafford family, but later he had let science outrun him. Still, he recognized pneumonia without difficulty. He whispered the dreadful word to Stafford and ordered in two trained nurses and no end of medicines.
Pierpont Stafford was frantic with anxiety. He telephoned for Gloria's brother and for Aunt Hortensia. Burroughs told them of the stolen sleigh ride and Freneau became less popular with the Staffords, father and son, than ever before.
Days and nights of harrowing fear dragged over that household. Wealth had not dulled affection, nor could it seem to bribe death. The fever line mounted on the nurse's chart like a mountain side, and Gloria grew weaker, except in her deliriums, when she seemed to be inhabited by demons of ferocious strength. 