"How strange that you should say that, Mr. Herrick! It is just word for word what Elizabeth said when she was last here. I never saw two people think so alike;" and here Mrs. Godfrey laughed quite merrily, for once before she had accused Malcolm of making Elizabethan speeches. But her laugh died away when she saw Malcolm's face. It was too sudden, and he was not prepared; but the next moment he was hanging over the parapet trying to catch a peacock butterfly, and was actually joining in the laugh. "That reminds me of a funny story," he said, speaking rather rapidly, "of two fellows who coined each other's ideas and got rather mixed sometimes;" and he told her the story from beginning to end with his old vivacity, and when he had finished it he went off in search of the Colonel. But Mrs. Godfrey looked thoughtfully at the distant prospect until Malcolm's footsteps were no longer audible. "I feel like a burglar," she said to herself--"as though I had picked a lock and stolen something. I, to call myself a clever woman and never to guess it! But he has been too deep for me. He is very strong; one might as well try to open an oyster with one's nails as to find out anything Malcolm Herrick wishes to hide." Mrs. Godfrey's face grew more troubled. "His mouth was like iron," she whispered, "but his face was so white in the sunshine. Poor fellow--poor fellow," in quite a caressing tone. "But you will be safe with me--even Alick shall not know. I wonder if he guesses anything; he only said yesterday that Mr. Herrick was different somehow. Ah, Elizabeth," she went on, pacing the terrace restlessly, "even wise women like you and me make mistakes sometimes. Yes, yes, you have made a great mistake, my dear;" and then she went into the house to get ready for her walk. Malcolm went to Norway, and wondered why he did not enjoy himself more. He had congenial companions, good sport, and the weather was distinctly favourable, but he could not get rid of his trouble. Wherever he went, in sunlight or moonlight, the shadowy presence of the woman he loved so passionately walked beside him. On the shores of the lonely fiord or in the pine forests, Elizabeth's bright, speaking face seemed to move before him like a will o' the wisp; even in the rustle of the summer breeze in the leaves he could hear her voice, with its odd breaks and sibilant pauses, so curiously sweet to his ear. "I am possessed," he would say to himself--"I am possessed!" and indeed with all his strength of will he was powerless to resist that influence. Dinah still wrote to him from time to time. The Wood House was empty, she told him; they had taken a house at Ullswater for three months. Mr. Carlyon and Theo were to be their guests. "Mr. Carlyon is very far from well," she wrote, "and his doctor has ordered complete rest for some months; and we think Elizabeth needs rest and change too, so altogether it is an excellent plan."