of strengthening it, pointed playfully to the name on the paper, and asked, “Have you spoken to her yet?” Frank was glad Roger had broached the subject, and he began at once to tell what he meant to do and be, if Magdalen would but listen favorably to him. He would study so hard, and overcome his laziness and his expensive habits, and be a man, such as he knew he had not been, but such as he felt he was capable of being with Magdalen as his leading star. He had _not_ spoken to her yet, he said, but he should do so that night, and he was glad to have Roger’s approval, as that would surely bias Magdalen’s decision. Frank grew very enthusiastic, and drove his penknife repeatedly into the table, and ran his fingers through his hair, and pulled up his collar and looked in the glass; but never glanced at Roger, to whom every word he uttered was like a stab, and whose face was wet with perspiration as he listened and felt that his heart was breaking. “I’d better go away for a day or two, until the matter is settled, for if I stay I might say that to Magdalen which would hardly be fair to say, after Frank’s confiding in me as he has,” Roger thought; and, after the mail came in, and he had some pretext for doing so, he announced his intention of going to New York in the afternoon train. “I shall not go to the house,” he said, “as I have some writing to do; so please tell your mother where I have gone, and that I may not return until day after to-morrow.” With all his efforts to seem natural, there was something hurried and excited in his manner, which Frank observed and wondered at, but he attributed it to some perplexity in business matters, and never suspected that it had anything to do with him and his prospective affairs. Roger talked but little that morning, but busied himself at his own desk, until time for the train, when, with some directions to Frank as to what to do in case certain persons called, he left his office and went on his way to New York. After Roger’s departure, Frank grew tired of staying alone. The day had continued wet and uncomfortable, and few had dropped in at the office, and these for only a moment. So, after a little, he started for Millbank, resolving, if a good opportunity occurred, to speak to Magdalen again on the subject uppermost in his mind. He did not see his mother as he entered the house, but he met a servant in the hall and asked for Magdalen. “Miss Lennox was in Mrs. Floyd’s room,” the servant said, and Frank went there to find her. “I sent her up garret to shet a winder and hain’t seen her sense,” Hester said in answer to his question. “She’s somewheres round, most likely. Did you want anything particular?” “No, nothing very particular,” was Frank’s reply, as he left the room and continued his search for Magdalen, first in the parlors, and then in the little room at the end of the upper hall, which had been fitted up for a fernery.