After seeing Lucy to bed that night, Mina decided to go for a short stroll. Coming home in the bright moonlight, she glanced up at their bedroom window and noticed Lucy's head leaning out. Mina thought that Lucy was looking for her, but she was not — Lucy did not even notice Mina. She appeared, in fact, to be fast asleep. Curiously, seated on the window sill next to her was something that looked like a "good sized bird." Running upstairs to the bedroom in a panic, Mina discovered that Lucy was now back in her bed — asleep, but holding her hand to her throat as if chilled. Mina chooses not to awaken her, yet she notices, much to her dismay, that Lucy looks pale and haggard. Mina attributes this to Lucy's fretting about something.
On the next day (15th of August), Mina notices that Lucy is "languid and tired" and that she slept later than normal. Mina receives a bit of unexpected and shocking news from Mrs. Westenra, Lucy's
mother. Mrs. Westenra's doctor has informed her that she has only a few months to live because of a heart condition.
Two days later, Mina is despondent. She has had no news from Jonathan yet, and Lucy seems to be growing weaker and weaker by the day. Mina cannot understand Lucy's decline, for she eats well and sleeps well and gets plenty of exercise. Yet at night, Mina has heard her awaken as if gasping for air, and just last night, she found Lucy leaning out of the open window again; Lucy was incredibly weak and her breath came with much difficulty. Inspecting Lucy's throat as she lay asleep, Mina noticed that the puncture wounds had not healed; if anything, they were larger than before and the edges were pale and faintly puckered. "They were like little white dots with red centers."
In a letter dated the 17th of August, Mr. S. F. Billington (to whom the boxes from the Demeter were consigned) orders the boxes to be delivered to Carfax, near Purfleet, in London.
