Veronica, Matilde, and Gregorio were all seized nearly at the same time.
Several of the servants left the house within half an hour after it was known that their masters were all poisoned.

Within a fortnight, Bosio Macomer had killed himself and there had been two poisonings.

Matilde's maid and a housemaid, the cook, and the butler went quietly to their several rooms, took the most valuable of their own possessions, and slipped out.

They felt that the house was doomed, with every one in it.
But some one had gone for the doctor, and he arrived in a short time.
Matilde, to whom all the proper antidotes had been given on the previous day, might have taken them at once, but in the first place, weak and still suffering the consequence of the first dangerous experiment, she was almost unconscious with pain, and secondly, if she had taken an antidote herself, it would have seemed strange that she should not administer it to Veronica, or at least send some one to the young girl to do so.

Gregorio lay howling with pain in his room.