For half an hour, Renfield became more and more excited. I pretended not to look at him, but I watched him carefully. Suddenly, he got a strange look in his eyes. People who work in hospitals for mad people know this look very well. Then he became very quiet. He sat on the edge of his bed and looked at the wall with dull eyes.

I wanted to know if he was really quiet or just acting. I tried to talk to him about his pets. He always liked to talk about them before.

At first he said nothing. Then he said angrily, "I do not care about them now!"

"What?" I said. "Do you not care about spiders?" (Spiders were his favorite thing, and his notebook was full of numbers about them.)

He answered in a mysterious way, "Peolpe look at the bridesmaids when they wait for the bride. But when the bride arrives, nobody looks at the bridesmaids."