The hope I dreamed of was a dream—
Was but a dream; and now I wake
Exceeding comfortless, and worn and sad
For a dream's sake.
—CHRISTINA ROSSETTI.
For the next few weeks Malcolm was much occupied with business, but he contrived to pay a flying visit to Oxford, and to spend a few hours with Dinah and Cedric. He had corresponded with Dinah regularly, and her letters told him all he most wished to know. At first they had been very sad. Cedric had broken down utterly on seeing his sisters, and both she and Elizabeth had been very much upset. The change in him was so great that they could hardly recognise their bright-faced boy, and Dinah owned that they had been shocked by the hard, reckless manner in which he had spoken. "I think Mr. Jacobi's influence has done great harm," she wrote; "Cedric says such extraordinary things sometimes, that I feel quite frightened to hear him. He never used to talk so—surely Oxford cannot have done this." Malcolm ground his teeth rather savagely when he read this. "He has poisoned the wells," he said to himself a second time. "There is no punishment too severe for one who tries to contaminate the innocence of youth!"
Dinah's letters became more cheerful after a time. Cedric liked having her near him, and she saw him for an hour or two every day. Elizabeth had not come down again. David Carlyon was not well. He had caught a fresh cold, and Elizabeth seemed worried about him, all the more that his sister was with him, and Theo did not understand nursing. "Theo Carlyon is rather an unsatisfactory person," wrote Dinah.
By-and-by she gave him news of Leah Jacobi. Mrs. Godfrey's brilliant idea was certainly likely to be verified. Mrs. Richardson had been several times to the Manor House, she wrote, and had evidently taken a fancy to Leah. A few days later there was still more satisfactory news.
"It is all arranged," she wrote triumphantly. "Mrs. Richardson has engaged Miss Jacobi as a travelling companion, and will pay her a handsome salary. They are to leave England in about ten days' time. Mrs. Godfrey says that she and the Colonel will be quite sorry to lose their guest—Miss Jacobi is so gentle and affectionate that they have both grown fond of her; and Mrs. Godfrey predicts that Mrs. Richardson will never part with her."
Malcolm paid his second visit to Oxford soon after the receipt of this letter. Dinah was delighted to see him, and to hear that he intended to spend a quiet Sunday with them.
"I was just going to write to you," she said, when the first greetings had passed between them. "Cedric was so upset last night. He had a letter from that odious man Jacobi. Such a letter! written on a dirty scrap of paper in pencil. But I will show it to you; Cedric left it here;" and Dinah unlocked her writing-case.
Malcolm frowned as he read it.
"I am up Queer Street, my boy," wrote Jacobi; "12 Gresham Gardens is in the hands of the bailiffs, and every stick of furniture is to be sold; and as England is rather too hot for me just now, I am going to make tracks for New York. If I could see that sister of mine, I would give her a piece of my mind. What a cursed fool the girl has been! But it is all that fellow Herrick's fault. He is a deep one, and he has a game of his own on hand; I am as sure of that as that my name is Saul Jacobi. Well, ta-ta, old fellow, I will let you know my diggings later on. Hang that fellow! if it had not been for him we should have pulled the job through, and you would have had the handsomest wife in Europe. Well, that game's played out, and I was never the one to cry over spilt milk. 'A short life and a merry one,' that's my creed.—Yours up to date,"
"SAUL MELCHIOR JACOBI."
"So we are rid of the brute for the present," observed Malcolm. The expression seemed to alarm Dinah.