Elizabeth used to read his name sometimes in the columns of the Times and the Morning Post.

"He seems to go everywhere, and to know every one," she observed once to Dinah; "I am afraid he will be terribly spoiled." But she only said it to tease Dinah.

She knew that Malcolm Herrick had no overweening estimate of himself--that, in spite of his success and his many friends, and all the smiles and adulation lavished on him, at heart he was a lonely man.

Perhaps in her way Elizabeth was lonely too.
In spite of her devotion to David's father, there were times when the narrowness of her life oppressed her--when her broad sympathies and strong vitality seemed to cry out for a larger life, for a wider outlook--when she trod the woodland paths with a sense of weariness--the same path day after day.
"How tired one gets of it all!" she said to herself one May afternoon, as she came in sight of the porch where Mr.Carlyon was reading tranquilly and enjoying the sweet spring air.

The curate-in-charge looked slightly older and had taken to spectacles, but otherwise there was little change in him.