There is something striking and original about him, and then in spite of his cleverness he is so simple and good.

Oh, Betty, my darling," she went on, "why could you not have given me such a brother! I should have been so proud of him!" And then Dinah checked herself in very shame, for she remembered how she had promised Elizabeth the previous evening that she would take David Carlyon to her sisterly heart.
It was not a very cheerful birthday tea, though each one of the trio tried to do his or her best to promote innocent hilarity.

Elizabeth talked a great deal, but her face was still flushed, and she rather avoided her lover's eyes, and as for David he talked principally to Dinah.

He told funny little parish stories which made her laugh, and to which Elizabeth listened with a manifest effort, and he took no notice when she chimed in with some irrelevant remark.

Dinah wondered to herself more than once if he really had not noticed that Elizabeth's eyelids were still reddened, in spite of cold water and eau de Cologne.
David was certainly a little dense in his happiness, she thought, and then she sighed involuntarily as she thought of the lonely man who had left them.
"He will take it hardly," she said to herself.