Not a word of excuse for himself, or regret for the part he had had in effecting poor Jessie’s death. He could scarcely have written less than he did, and the cold, indifferent wording of his message struck Magdalen just as it did Roger. She had wept over poor Jessie’s story, and pitied the young, desolate creature who had been so cruelly wronged. And she had pitied Arthur Grey at first, and her heart had gone out after him with a strange, inexplicable feeling of sympathy. But when it came to Saratoga and Italy, and all the seductive arts he must have used to tempt Jessie from her husband and child, and when she heard the message he had sent to the outraged husband, her blood boiled with indignation, and she felt that if she were to see him then, she must curse him to his face. While Roger had been reading of him, her mind had, for some cause, gone back to that Saturday afternoon, in the graveyard, when she met the handsome stranger whose courteous manners had so fascinated her, and who had been so interested in everything pertaining to the Irving family. Suddenly it came to her that _this_ was _Arthur Grey_, and, with a start, she exclaimed: “I have seen that man,—I know I have. I saw him at your father’s grave years and years ago.” Roger looked inquiringly at her as she explained the circumstances of her interview with the stranger, telling of his questions with regard to Mrs. Irving and his apparent interest in her, and when she had finished her story, he said, “Is it your impression that he was ever in Belvidere before?” “I know he never was,” Magdalen replied. “He told me so himself, and I should have known it without his telling, he seemed so much a stranger to everything and everybody.” Roger knew that every word his sister had breathed against his mother was a lie, but Magdalen’s involuntary testimony helped to comfort and reassure him as nothing else had done. The clause which read “the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving” did not especially trouble him now, though he could not then forgive the father who had wronged him so, and when he thought of him there came back to his face the same sad, sorry look it had worn when Magdalen first came in, and which while talking to her had gradually passed away. She detected it at once, and connecting it with the will said to him again, “Oh, Mr. Irving, it would have been better if I had never come here. I have only brought sorrow and ruin to you.” “No, Magda,” Roger replied, “it would not have been better if you had never come here. You have made me very happy, so happy that—” he could not get any further for something in his throat which prevented his utterance.