Through this vague discomfort there presently pierced a positive apprehension of definite unpleasantness. She would have to tell her mother that she had spent the whole morning talking to Mr. Rankin, and her mother would be cross, and would say such--Lydia remembered as in a distant dream her supreme content with life of only a few hours earlier. It seemed a very bewildering matter to her now. Ought she so certainly to tell her mother? She lingered for a moment over this possibility. Then, "Oh, of course!" she said aloud, flushing with an angry shame at her moment's parley with deceit. She heard her mother's door open and turned to see the doctor running down the stairs, his wrinkled little face very grave. "You were right, Lydia, to be anxious about your mother, and I am an old fool! There is no fool like a fluent fool! I'm afraid she's in for quite a siege. There's no danger, thank Heaven! but I don't believe she can be about for a month or more. I'm going to 'phone for a trained nurse. Just see that nobody disturbs her, will you?" He darted away, leaving Lydia leaning against the newel-post, gasping. The clock in the dining-room chimed the quarter-hour. She cried out to herself, as she climbed the stairs heavily, that she could not stand it to have things happen to her so fast. If all Endbury days were going to be like this one-- She was for a moment brought to a standstill by a realization of depths within herself that she had not dreamed of. She realized, horrified, that on hearing the doctor's verdict her first thought--gone before it was formulated, but still her first thought--had been one of relief that now she need not tell her mother. It had not occurred to her at all, nor did it now, that she either should or should not tell her father. CHAPTER VII OUTSIDE THE LABYRINTH The Black Rock woods lay glowing under the cloudy autumn sky like a heap of live coals, the maples still quivering in scarlet, the chestnuts sunk into a clear yellow flame, the oaks, parched by the September heat, burnt out into rusty browns. Above them, the opalescent haze of October rose like a faint blue smoke, but within the woods the subdued light was richly colored, like that which passes through the stained glass of a great cathedral. The first of the fallen leaves lay in pools of gold in the hollows of the brown earth, where the light breezes had drifted them.