. She had an enormous capacity for quiet and tranquillity.
To-day she felt that more complicated things were moving rapidly inside
her head than ever before--as though she had tried to keep track of the
revolutions of a wheel and had lost her count and could now only stare
stupidly at the spokes, whirling till they blended into one blur. What
was this Endbury life she had come back to? What in the world had that
man been talking about? What a strange person he was! How very bright
his eyes were when he looked at you--as though he were, somehow, seeing
you more than most people did. What did the doctor mean by all that
about Marietta? It had never occurred to her that the life of anyone
about her might have been different from what it was. What else was
there for people to do but what everybody else did? It was all very
unsettling and, in this heat and loneliness, daunting.

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