She was beginning to waver, and Frank saw it, and too much excited himself to know what he was doing, held the match so near the paper that it began to scorch, and in a moment more would have been in a blaze. Then Magdalen came to herself, and struck the match from Frank’s hand, and snatching the paper from him, said, vehemently, “You must not do it. Roger would not suffer it, if he knew. Roger is honorable, Roger is just. _I_ found the paper, Frank. _I_ will carry it to Roger, and tell him it was I who ruined him. I will beg for his forgiveness, and then go away and die, so I cannot witness his fall.” She had risen to her feet, and was leaving the garret, but Frank held her back. He could not part with her thus; he could not risk the probable consequences of her going to Roger, as she had said she would. But one result could follow such a step, and that result was death to all Frank most desired. Millbank weighed as nothing when compared with Magdalen, and Frank made her listen to him again, and worked upon her pity for Roger until, worried and bewildered, and half-crazed with excitement, she cried out, “I’ll think about it, Frank. I will love you, if I can. Give me a week in which to decide; but let me go now, or I shall surely die.” She tore herself from him, and was hurrying down the stairs with the will grasped in her hands, when suddenly she stopped, and, offering it to Frank, said to him, “Put it under the floor where I found it. Let it stay there till the week is up.” There was hope in what she said, and Frank hastened to do her bidding, and then went softly down the stairs, and passed unobserved through the hall out into the rain, which seemed so grateful to him after his recent excitement. He did not care to meet his mother just then, and so he quietly left the house, and walked rapidly down the avenue toward the village, intending to strike into the fields and go back to Millbank at the usual dinner hour, so as to excite no suspicions. To say that Frank felt no elation at the thought of Millbank belonging to him, would be wrong; for, as he walked along, he was conscious of a new and pleasant feeling of importance, mingled with a feeling that he was very magnanimous, too, and was doing what few men in his position would have done. “All mine, if I choose to claim it,” he said to himself once, as he paused on a little knoll and looked over the broad acres of the Irving estate, which stretched far back from the river toward the eastern hills. “All mine, if I choose to have it so.”