mself 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!

Love lies deeper than all words;
And not the spoken but the speechless love
Waits answer, ere I rise and go my way.
--BROWNING.

When in after-years Malcolm Herrick reviewed this portion of his life,
he owned to himself that during the five weeks that followed the
Templeton Bean-feast he had lived in a fool's paradise--in a state of
beatitude that was as unsubstantial and fleeting as the sunset clouds
that piled themselves behind the fir woods.

He was very happy, almost pathetically so, and the new wine of youth
seemed c