“You had no cause,” Alice replied, thinking of the “Piccola Sentinella,” rather than of New Haven; “I liked Mr. Irving very much as a boy, and when we met him abroad I was very glad to see him and rather encouraged his visits than otherwise, but father disliked him thoroughly, or seemed to, and treated him so cavalierly that I wondered he could come to us at all. But he did, and then father took me away, and I saw Mr. Irving no more till he called upon me in New York. I was sick then and did not go out, but I heard of a Miss Lennox who was with the Irvings and said to be very beautiful, and that was you.” “I was with the Irvings,” Magdalen replied, and Alice continued: “I fancied, then, that Mr. Irving would eventually marry you and speculated a good deal upon the matter. It seems so funny that _you_ are _here_! I do not understand it at all, or why you should leave Millbank. Mr. Frank Irving is the heir now, is he not?” Magdalen hesitated a moment, and then thinking it better to do so, told briefly of her life at Millbank until that luckless day when she discovered the will. “After that Roger went to Schodick,” she said, “and I—I might have stayed there, but I did not like Mrs. Irving’s manner towards me when she became the mistress, and I could not be dependent upon Frank, and so I came away.” Alice knew that Magdalen was withholding something from her, and with a woman’s wit guessed that it concerned Frank; but she would not question her, and turned the conversation into another channel, and talked of the books she had read and the authors she liked best. It was comparatively early when Magdalen went up to her room, a door of which communicated with Alice’s. This the latter desired should stand open. “I like to feel that some one is near me when I wake in the night, as I often do,” Alice said, and then she added, “I shall be obliged to leave you for a time, but do you go straight to bed. I know you must be tired. I shall come in so softly that you will not hear me. Good-night.”