This was too manifest a hint to be disregarded even by the irrepressible Jacobi; but the next minute Malcolm added, "Will you excuse my leaving you, I see some old friends of mine on their way to the Pool, and they will expect me to join them;" but if Malcolm intended to do so, he chose a most circuitous route. "Rum chap that," observed Saul Jacobi, turning on his heel--"not easy to get any information out of him; looks as though he had swallowed the poker first, and then the tongs as a sort of relish afterwards, and neither of them agreed with him. I wonder what young Templeton saw in him. He lays it on pretty thick too: it is Herrick this and Herrick that, as though he were Solomon in all his glory. Confound his airs and impudence! Let me tell you, my young gentleman," with a sly smile, "that the Misses Templeton's private business is a matter that concerns Saul Jacobi pretty closely." Meanwhile Malcolm was in a white heat of righteous indignation. "That wretched little cad, how dare he meddle and pry into the Misses Templeton's family affairs! There is something I mistrust in the man; he is smooth and plausible, but he is crafty too; he is deep--deep--and if I do not mistake, he is clever too." Then he added, "I must get hold of Cedric; I am not comfortable at his associating with this man. Cedric is as weak as water; he is so easily led, he would be the dupe of any designing person; but the Jacobis will have to reckon with me;" and here Malcolm, who had uttered the last words aloud, stopped and looked rather foolish, as a merry laugh greeted his ear, and Elizabeth, in all the glory of her Paris gown and picture hat, barred the way, and regarded him with her beaming smile. "Mr. Herrick, you are quite dramatic; Hamlet or the melancholy Jacques could not have been more lost in gloomy meditation. If I may presume to ask the question, why will the Jacobis have to reckon with you?" "Did I say so?" returned Malcolm, with an uneasy laugh. "I suppose I was thinking aloud. That fellow Jacobi has been rubbing me up the wrong way; he stuck to me like a burr, and I could not get rid of him." "I had some trouble in shaking him off myself," she owned. "You were quite right, Mr. Herrick, he is not a gentleman, and I dislike his manner excessively; it is too subservient, and he is too soft-tongued. Poor dear Die, I wish you could have seen her face when he paid her a compliment; she looked quite bewildered." Elizabeth's eyes were dancing with amusement at the recollection, but Malcolm did not respond to her merriment; he felt things were too serious. "I am not at all easy in my mind," he said, and then Elizabeth looked at him inquiringly. "Jacobi seems to have got a hold on Cedric. He goes back with him to-night, does he not? Ah, I thought so," as Elizabeth nodded. "I must have some talk with him; I shall tell him that I disapprove of the Jacobis, and shall beg him to break off the acquaintance."