"Oh, thank you--thank you!" returned Elizabeth earnestly, and there was a beautiful colour in her face; she even held out her hand impulsively to him, as though her gratitude carried her away. "How good you are to us--a real friend to two lone, lorn women!" and here something twinkled in Elizabeth's eyes; but perhaps she was a little taken aback when Malcolm very quietly and reverently raised the hand to his lips, as though he were vowing knightly service to his liege lady. "I should ask nothing better than to be your friend," he said in a low voice; but perhaps something in her manner checked him, for he added hastily, "and your sister's too." It was rather a lame conclusion, but Elizabeth accepted it graciously. "I shall rely on you to help us," she said very seriously; "get him to break with the Jacobis, and Dinah and I will owe you a debt of gratitude." "Hush! please do not mention names," whispered Malcolm; "some one might overhear us;" but he was too late, Elizabeth's incautious speech had reached an unseen auditor. Malcolm felt a little ashamed of himself when he remembered his impulsive action. "She will think it so strange," he thought; "she will not understand that it was only the outward and visible sign of my inward reverence." But he was wrong, Elizabeth did understand, and she did not misjudge him. "He is a high-minded gentleman," she said to herself; and then she sighed and her face grew troubled, "but I wish--I wish he had not done that." Malcolm found his work cut out for him; for the remainder of the afternoon he was hunting his quarry. But Cedric was never alone. He was either surrounded by a bevy of girls or else Jacobi was beside him. Even Cedric seemed surprised at the tenacity with which his friend and host stuck to him. "Herrick wants me," he said once; "I will come back to you right enough, old fellow;" but Jacobi still pinioned him. "We will go together, my dear boy," he said pleasantly. "I have taken a fancy to your Mentor. He seems a clever chap. He is a barrister, isn't he, and literary, and all that sort of thing?" "I have told you about him often enough," returned Cedric, in rather a surly tone, as though the iron hand under the velvet glove made itself evident. Cedric felt he was being managed and coerced, and he waxed indignant; but Saul Jacobi was more than a match for him, and in spite of all Malcolm's efforts, Cedric went back to Henley without a word of warning. Malcolm was quite troubled and crestfallen over his failure. "I did my best," he said to Elizabeth; "I followed him about the whole afternoon, but that fellow stuck to him like a leech." "So I saw," she returned rather sadly; "it was no fault of yours, Mr. Herrick, I am quite sure of that. Well, we must find some other opportunity." And then Elizabeth smiled at him very kindly, and Malcolm went back to the Crow's Nest feeling somewhat comforted. CHAPTER XXIII SAINT ELIZABETH!