Frank’s recent intercourse with horse-jockeys, and men of the race-course, had not improved his language; but he was in earnest, and his mother promised whatever he required, and kept her promise all the more readily, because she knew that do what he would, and plead as he might, Magdalen would never be his wife. CHAPTER XXXIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. Wanted,— A young woman of pleasing address, and cultivated manners, as companion for a young lady who suffers greatly from ill health and nervous depression. It is desirable that the applicant should be both a good reader and good musician. “Address, for four weeks, “MRS. PENELOPE SEYMOUR, ‘St. Denis, New York.’ This advertisement was in the _Herald_, which Frank laid upon the table in the room where both his mother and Magdalen were sitting. It was four weeks since Magdalen’s first awakening to perfect consciousness after her long illness, and in that time she had improved rapidly. She went to the table now, and had ridden two or three times with Mrs. Walter Scott, between whom and herself there was a kind of tacit understanding that, so long as they remained together, each was to be as civil and polite to the other as possible, knowing the while that each would be glad to be relieved of the other’s society. Frank had made several efforts to ride with Magdalen. He wanted to exhibit her in town with his new bays, which he had bought for an enormous sum. But Magdalen always made some excuse; and without seeming to do it, Mrs. Walter Scott helped her to avoid him, so that he had had no opportunity for seeing her alone, since the interview in her chamber, when she told him her answer was final, and he had refused to consider it as such. He had been invited to join a party of young men from Hartford and Springfield, who were going on a fishing excursion to the Thousand Islands and from thence into Canada, if there should prove to be good hunting there, and when he brought the _Herald_ into the sitting-room, he came also to say good-by to his mother and Magdalen. “Perhaps I shall be gone six weeks,” he said, in reply to his mother’s questions as to his return, and he looked at Magdalen to see how she would take it.