"David Carlyon her husband--the husband of Elizabeth Templeton--why, the very birds knew how to mate more fitly!" he thought. "He is good and true, but he is not worthy of her;" and David in his sad humility was saying the same thing of himself. That evening Dinah received a note; Amias Keston left it. "My dear Miss Templeton," wrote Malcolm, "to-morrow I am leaving Staplegrove, and I know you will understand the reason why I do not call to bid you good-bye, and that you will not think me ungrateful after all the kindness and hospitality I have received from you. Your sister has often told me that you have no secrets from each other; so you will know why it is better for me to return to town. I have been to the vicarage this afternoon, and have seen Carlyon. With kindest regards to you and your sister, yours very sincerely and gratefully," "MALCOLM HERRICK." Elizabeth grew a little pale and bit her lip when Dinah showed her the note. "It has gone very deep," she said to herself. "David said so, and he was right--it has gone very deep." So Malcolm shook off the dust of Staplegrove, and the gates of his City of dreams clanged behind him. "He must dree his weird," he said to himself, as he sat down to his work in the gloomy room in Lincoln's Inn, and in spite of heart-sickness he worked on stolidly and well. The evenings were his worst time, when he went back to the empty house at Cheyne Walk and sat on the balcony brooding over his troubles, until the light faded and an eerie darkness crept over the river. "I suppose many men have to go through this sort of thing," he would say to himself, trying to philosophise in his old way, but if any one had seen his face! "What does our glorious Will say?--'Men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love.' Ah, but he also says, 'How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man's eyes!'" And sometimes, when the silence and solitude oppressed him terribly, he would picture to himself the dreary future. "I shall never marry," he would say. "There is only one woman in the whole world that I want, and she will have nothing to do with me and my love, and no other woman shall ever be my wife." And then he would wonder sadly what life would be like when he was an old bachelor; would he be living on here with Amias and Verity, or would he go back to his mother and do his duty to her in her old age? But with all his bitter ruminations he never let himself go again, but battled manfully with his pain, though as the days went on he grew paler and thinner, and looked wretchedly ill. Malcolm knew that his mother and Anna were back at Queen's Gate, but it was quite ten days before he saw them. He dreaded the ordeal of his mother's searching glances; but at last one evening he plucked up his courage and went.