Dinah spoke very little of her sister. She was well, she said in answer to Malcolm's inquiries--Elizabeth was so strong that her health rarely suffered; but she was grieving sorely for David. "Mr. Carlyon is better," she continued. "Elizabeth is the greatest comfort to him. She goes with him when he visits the sick, and sits beside him when he writes his sermons. Indeed, Theo says they are never apart. Theo is very much softened and subdued by her brother's death," went on Dinah. "I think Elizabeth's influence and example will do good there. I believe that, with all her faults, Theo Carlyon is really a good-hearted woman." Malcolm paid a flying visit to Oxford soon after he got back to town--somehow movement seemed necessary to him in those weary, restless days--and he took Mr. Dunlop with him, and had the satisfaction of seeing that Cedric appeared to like him at once. "He does not seem to stand on tiptoe and look over a fellow's head, don't you know," observed Cedric. "He meets one on equal terms, though he is ten years older. He is a chip of your block, Herrick, and I expect he is a good fellow too"--and all this speech did Malcolm retail to Dinah in his next letter. Cedric spent three or four days at Cheyne Walk before he started for the Continent, and again most of his time was devoted to his friends at 27 Queen's Gate. Malcolm was secretly glad that he was in such safe hands, for, as the time of Cedric's departure drew near, he could not divest himself of an uneasy fear that all their precautions might be unavailing, and that, when they least expected it, he and Leah Jacobi would come face to face. He knew that she and her new friend Mrs. Richardson were now settled at Sandy Hollow for the summer, and that Mrs. Richardson came frequently to town for sight-seeing or shopping expeditions. Malcolm little knew what good reason he had for his fears. On Cedric's last day in Cheyne Walk, Mrs. Herrick proposed that he should drive with her and Anna to Pall Mall to see some pictures that were being exhibited. She would leave them at the gallery for an hour, and call for them when she had done her shopping. Malcolm had promised to be there at the same time, and they would all go back together to Queen's Gate for the remainder of the day. It so happened that Mrs. Richardson had planned one of her favourite shopping expeditions for the same day, and in the course of the afternoon the hansom she had chartered drew up at a shop exactly opposite the gallery, where at that very moment Anna, Cedric, and Malcolm were coming down the staircase to join Mrs. Herrick, who was waiting for them in her carriage.