Then, as suddenly as it had come, the fierce glare vanished. The heavens--only a moment before open and flooding the land with sheets of living fire--were black and impenetrable, and the crashing thunder shook the air around and made the earth tremble, as though it were splitting up and the very elements were being dissolved. With a cry, the heartrending anguish of which will ring for ever in my ears, my mother sank down, a white, scared heap; and I, my limbs unstrung and my senses numbed, crouched helpless beside her. Then the rain fell and there was silence. CHAPTER IV. MY MOTHER'S WARNING. For many weeks after that terrible night in Rothland Wood, I lay wrestling with a fierce fever, my recovery from which was deemed little short of miraculous. A sound constitution, however, and careful nursing brought me round, and I opened my eyes one sunny morning upon what seemed to me almost a new world. The first thing that I can clearly remember after my return to consciousness was the extraordinary change which had taken place in my mother. From a beautiful, active woman, she seemed to have become transformed into a stern, cold statue. Even now I can recall how frightened I was of her during those first days of convalescence, and how I shrank from her constant presence by my bedside with a nameless dread. The change was in her appearance as well as in her manner. Her rich brown hair had turned completely grey, and there was a frigid, set look in her face, denuded of all expression or affection, which chilled me every time I looked into it. It was the face--not of my mother, but of a stranger. As I began to regain strength and the doctors pronounced me fit to leave the sick-room, she began to display signs of uneasiness, and often looked at me in a singular kind of way, as though there were something which she would say to me. And one night I woke up suddenly, to find her standing by my bedside, wrapped in a long dressing-gown, her grey hair streaming down her back and a wild gleam in her burning eyes. I started up in bed with a cry of fear, but she held out her hand with a gesture which she intended to be reassuring. "Nothing is the matter, Philip," she said. "Lie down, but listen." I obeyed, and had she noticed me closely she would have seen that I was shivering; for her strange appearance and the total lack of affection in her manner, had filled me with something approaching to horror. "Philip, you will soon be well enough to go out," she continued. "People will ask you questions about that night." It was the first time the subject had been broached between us. I raised myself a little in the bed and gazed at her, with blanched cheeks and fascinated eyes. "Listen, Philip! You must remember nothing. Do you understand me?" "Yes," I answered faintly. "You must forget that you saw me in the garden; you must forget everything your father said to you. Do you hear?"