“You have heard of that sad affair too, I see; but perhaps you don’t know all, and how I was deceived.” “Yes, I know all. I have seen Mrs. Irving’s letter—the one she wrote on board the ‘Sea Gull,’ and to which you added a postscript. Mr. Grey, why did you write so coldly? Why did you express no sorrow for what you had done? Why did you leave a doubt of Jessie to sting and torment poor Roger, the truest, the best man that ever lived?” Magdalen was confronting her father with poor Jessie’s wrongs, and he felt that, if possible, she resented them more than those done to her mother. “I was a fiend, a demon in those days,” he said. “I hated the old man who had won the prize I coveted so much. I did not care how deeply I wounded him. I wanted him to feel as badly as I felt when I first knew I had lost her. I was angry with fate, which had thwarted me a second time and taken her from me just as I thought possession secure. I did not despair of coaxing her to go with me at last,—that is, I hoped I might, for I knew her pliant nature; but death came between us, and even in that terrible hour, when the water around me was full of drowning, shrieking wretches, I cursed aloud when I saw her golden hair float on the waves far beyond my reach, and then go down for ever.” He shuddered as if with cold, was silent a moment, and then went on: “I loved Jessie Morton as I have never loved a woman since, not even your mother. I went to Belvidere just because she had once lived there. I met you in the graveyard, and was struck with your eyes, which reminded me of Laura. I never dreamed you were my child, but I was interested in you, and made you a part of the little pencil sketch I drew of the yard. That picture has often excited Alice’s curiosity, for it was hung in my room at home. When you came and I heard you were from Millbank I hid the sketch away, lest you should see it and recognize the place and wonder how I came by it. You see I am telling you everything, and I may as well confess that when Penelope told me you were from Millbank I wished you had never come to us. We usually hate what we have injured, and anything connected with the Irvings has been very distasteful to me, and I could not endure to hear the name.” “But you would like Roger; he is the best, the noblest of men!” Magdalen exclaimed, so vehemently that her father must have been dull indeed if he had failed to see how strong a hold Roger Irving had on Magdalen’s affections. He did see it, but could not sympathize with her then, or at once lay aside all his olden prejudice against the Irvings, and it would be long before Magdalen would feel that in her love for Roger she had her father’s cordial sympathy.