Mrs. Walter Scott pretended to be very busy counting her stitches, but she managed to steal a side glance at her companion, who fairly gasped at what he had heard, and whose fingers fluttered nervously among the papers on the table, on one of which he kept writing, in an absent kind of way and in every variety of hand, the name of Magdalen. He had _not_ noticed the growing affection between the young people; that is, he had seen nothing on Magdalen’s part to warrant such a conclusion. Once, just after his return from Europe, he had thought his nephew’s attentions very marked, and a thought had crossed his mind as to what might possibly be the result. But all this was past, as he believed, and his sister’s intelligence came upon him like a thunderbolt, stunning him for an instant, and making him powerless to speak. Those were fierce heart-pangs which Roger was enduring, and they showed themselves upon his face, which was very pale, and the corners of his mouth twitched painfully, but his voice was steady and natural as he said at last,— “And Magdalen,—does she—have you reason to believe she would return a favorable answer to Frank’s suit?” Mrs. Irving was sure now that what she had suspected was true, and that nothing but a belief in Magdalen’s preference for another would avail with him, so she replied unhesitatingly,— “Certainly I do. I have suspected for years that she was strongly attached to Frank, and her manner towards him fully warrants me in that belief. She is the soul of honor, and never professes what she does not feel.” “Ye-es,” Roger said, with something between a sigh and a long-drawn breath, assenting thus to what his sister said, and trying to reconcile with it Magdalen’s demeanor toward himself of late.