coln's Inn.

"The shadows of the prison-house," as he called it, began to haunt him,
and he counted up his days as jealously as a miser counts his gold.

Every day he saw Elizabeth; and each hour he was alone with her he
found it more difficult to keep silence; but as yet he had had himself
well in hand. Perhaps something in her manner had sealed his lips, or
he feared that the spell of this happy dream would be broken. But
during those wakeful summer nights, when that sweet pain kept him
restless, he would tell himself that the time had not yet come, that
she did not know him well enough.

"She is not a young girl," he would say to himself; "she is a mature
woman who knows the world and has thought deeply-why, even to know her
is a liberal education." And then he repeated to himself in the
darkness those lines of Shelley--

"Her voice was like the voice of his own soul,
Heard in the calm of thought,"

for all the sweet influences of summer and nature had only fed the
passion, and every day it seemed to grow stronger and stronger.

"She is my other self, she thinks my thoughts, we have a thousand
things in common, how can she help loving me!" he would say when his
mood was jubilant and sanguine; but at other times a chill doubt would
cross his mind.

"She is different from other women, she will not be easily won, that is
why I fear to speak;" but all the same Malcolm registered a mental vow
that he would not leave Staplegrove until the decisive words had been
spoken.

CHAPTER XXIV

DOWN BY THE POOL

The heaven
Of thy mild brows hath given
Grace to all things I see;
And in thy life I live, and lose myself in thee.
--J. Addington Symonds

I would love infinitely, and be loved.
--Browning

Malcolm was no hot-headed boy to be moved by mere impulse, nevertheless
the day came when all his prudent resolutions were forgotten, when
silence and self-repression were absolute torture to him, when he felt
he must speak or for ever hold his peace.

It was Elizabeth's birthday; he only heard that afterwards, or he would
have brought her some choice offering in the shape of flowers or books,
in honour of his patron Saint's fete-day; but happily Elizabeth was
unconscious of this.

"I am thirty-one to-day," she said to him gaily; "is not that a great
age? Oh, no wonder Cedric calls me an old maid." And then she laughed
w