ister, 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.

Anna, who saw him coming, flew down the staircase to meet him. She
looked younger than ever, and quite pretty, with the soft pink colour
in her cheeks and her fair hair; but her smile faded when she saw
Malcolm's face.

"Oh, Malcolm, have you been ill?" she asked in an alarmed voice.

"No, dear, not ill--only a trifle seedy and out of sorts. Come, let me
look at you, lady fair?" and