If she was attached to Frank, and had been for years, why that sudden kindling of her eyes, and that lighting up of her whole face whenever he was with her, and why that sweet graciousness of manner towards him which she had of late evinced? Was Magdalen a coquette, or was that the way of girls? Roger did not know,—he had never made them a study, never been interested in any girl or woman except Magdalen; and now, when he must lose her, he began to feel that he had loved her always from the moment when he took her as his child and first held her baby hands in his, and laid her soft cheek against his own. She _was_ his,—he had a better right to her than Frank, and he wrote her name all over the sheet of paper on the table, and thought of all the castles he had built within the last few weeks,—castles of the time when Magdalen would be really his and he could lavish upon her the love and tender caresses he would be coy of giving any one who was not his wife. Roger was naturally very reserved,—and in his intercourse with Magdalen he had only shown her glimpses of the deep, warm love he felt for her. He held peculiar notions about such things, and he was sorry now that he did,—sorry that he had not improved his opportunities and won her for his own before Frank appealed to him, as he had done through his mother, and thus sealed his lips forever. He was thinking of all this, and was so absorbed in it that he forgot his sister was there watching him narrowly, but veiling her watchfulness with her apparent interest in her worsted work, which became strangely tangled and mixed, and required her whole attention to unravel and set right. But she could not sit still all the evening and let Roger fill that sheet of foolscap with “Magdalen;” she must recall him to the point at issue, and so she said at last,— “Frank will do nothing without your sanction, and what he wants is your permission, as Magdalen’s guardian, for him to address her. Can he have it?” Then Roger looked up a moment, and the pencil which had been so busy began to trace a long black line through every name as if he thus would blot out the sweetest dream of his life. “Have my permission to address Magdalen? Yes—certainly, if he wants it. I had thought—yes, I had hoped—I had supposed—” Here Roger came to a full stop, and then, as the only thing he could do, he added,— “I thought I had heard something about a Miss Grey of New York, and that probably has misled me. Was there nothing in that report?” “Nothing,” Mrs. Irving replied. “Frank knew her in New Haven and met her abroad, and so it was only natural he should call upon her in New York. There is nothing in that rumor; absolutely nothing. Frank’s mind was too full of Magdalen for him to care for a hundred Miss Greys. Poor foolish boy, it brings my own youth back to me to see him so infatuated. I must go to him now, for I know how anxiously he is waiting for me. Thank you for the favorable answer I can give him.”