CHAPTER XXXIII.
"HE WILL COME RIGHT" If your eyes look for nothing but evil, you will always see evil triumphant; but if you have learned to let your glance rest on sincerity, simpleness, truth, you will ever discover deep down in all things the silent overpowering victory of that you love.
-- MAETERLINCK Long afterwards Malcolm compared that night's work to a severe wrestling-match, and owned that it had taxed his mental and bodily strength to the utmost.

The illustration was singularly apt.

The whole force of his manhood and will were set to rescue this poor lad from the effects of his own infatuation and folly, but at first he made little progress.
Saul Jacobi's pernicious influence had done its work, and Malcolm, to his dismay and disgust, was forced to realise that his baleful and hated arguments had already poisoned Cedric's mind.

More than once he was revolted by ideas which he knew had been inculcated by Saul Jacobi.
"He has poisoned the wells," Malcolm said to himself indignantly--"Cedric's fresh young mind has been contaminated by his odious philosophy," and his heart grew sad as he remembered Dinah's faith in her boy.
More than once he was so sickened by Cedric's want of restraint and childish abandon of grief that he was tempted to give up the struggle.
Only Elizabeth's pleading voice was in his ears-"You will bear with him--you will be patient with him, will you not ?" and then again he would nerve himself to fresh effort.
All at once a thought came to him as an inspiration.

Cedric had been giving way to a perfect paroxysm of despair, and Malcolm had with some sternness remonstrated with him on his want of manliness and self-control.