Magdalen had waited for Frank until she grew so nervous and restless that she crept back to her couch, and, wrapping her shawl about her, lay down among the pillows, still listening for Frank’s footsteps and wondering that he did not come. She had made up her mind at last. After days and nights of throbbing headache and fierce heart-pangs and bitter tears, she had come to a decision. She would die so willingly for Roger, if that would save Millbank for him. She would endure any pain or toil or privation for him, but she could not _sin_ for him. She could not swear to love and honor one, when her whole being was bound up in another. She could not marry Frank, but she hoped she might persuade him to let Roger keep Millbank, while he took the mill and the shoe-shop, and the bonds and mortgages. He would surely listen to that proposition, and she had sent for him to hear her decision, and then she meant next day to take the will from its hiding place, and carry it to Roger, with the letter she guarded so carefully. This was her decision, and she waited for Frank until two hours were gone and the spring twilight began to creep into the room, and still no one came near her. She heard the dinner bell, and knew it was not answered, and then, as the minutes went by, she became conscious of some unusual stir in the house among the servants, and grasping the bell rope at last, she rang for Celine, and asked where Mrs. Irving was. “In the library with Mr. Irving and Mr. Frank and Hester. They are talking very loud, and don’t pay any attention to the dinner bell,” was Celine’s reply, and Magdalen felt as if she was going to faint with the terrible apprehension of evil which swept over her. “That will do. You may go,” she said to Celine; and then, the moment the girl was gone, she rose from the couch, and knotting the heavy cord around her dressing-gown, and adjusting her shawl, went stealthily out into the hall, and stealing softly down the stairs, soon stood near the door of the library. It was closed, but Hester’s loud tones reached her as she talked of the will, and with a shudder she turned away, whispering to herself: “Too late! He’ll never believe me now.” Then a thought of Aleck crossed her mind. She did not think he was in the library; possibly he was in Hester’s room; at all events she would go there, and wait for Hester’s return. An outside door stood open as she passed through the rear hall which led to Hester’s room, and she felt the chill night air blow on her, and shivered with the cold. But she did not think of danger to herself from the exposure. She only thought of Roger and what was transpiring in the library, and she entered Hester’s room hurriedly, and uttered a cry of joy when she saw Aleck there. He was not smoking now. He was sitting bowed over the hearth, evidently wrapped in thought, and he gave a violent start when Magdalen seized his arm, and asked him what had happened.