He was better the next day, and went as usual to his office, but the next morning his headache had returned with redoubled violence. And while Magdalen was making her way to the old-fashioned farm-house covered with vines and surrounded with flowers and shrubs, he was sleeping quietly upon the couch in his room, unmindful of the great happiness in store for him,—the great surprise, coming nearer and nearer as Magdalen hastened her footsteps, her heart beating almost to bursting when at a sudden turn in the road she came upon the house which they told her was Mr. Irving’s. “The first one round the corner. You’ll know it by the heaps of flowers, and the pretty yard,” a boy had said, and Magdalen had almost run, so eager was she to be there. “Oh, how beautiful! I should know Roger lived here,” she said, as she stopped to admire the velvety turf in which patches of bright flowers were blooming, the fanciful beds, the borders and walks, and the signs of taste and care everywhere visible. She did not think of the old house, with its low windows and doors, and signs of antiquity. She saw only the marks of cultivation around it, and thought it was Roger’s home. The windows of an upper room were open, and a rustic basket of ivy and geraniums and verbenas was standing in one of them, while a book with the paper folder in it was in the other, and across both white curtains were hanging, the summer wind moving them in and out with a slow, gentle motion. “I know that this is Roger’s room,” Magdalen said, and a vague desire seized her that he might receive Millbank from her there. * * * * * Old Hester Floyd had finished her work and was about to “tidy herself up a little,” when a rustling movement at the door attracted her attention, and she turned to find Magdalen standing there, her dark eyes bright as diamonds, her cheeks flushed and burning with excitement, her lips apart and her hands clasped together, as she bent slightly forward across the kitchen threshold. With a scream, Hester bounded toward her, and dragging her into the room, exclaimed, “Magdalen, Magdalen, I knew it, I knew it. I said something was going to happen when the rooster crowed so this morning,—somebody going to come; but I did not dream of you, Magdalen, oh! Magdalen.” She kept repeating the name, and with her hard, rough hands held and rubbed the soft white fingers she had clasped; then, as the joy kept growing, she sobbed aloud and broke down entirely. “Oh! Magdalen,” she said, “I am so glad for _him_. He has wanted you and missed you all the time, though he never mentioned your name.” Something in the face or manner of the younger woman must have communicated itself to the mind of the elder, for Magdalen had given no reason for her sudden appearance at Schodick, or sign of what she meant to do. But Hester took her coming as a good omen for Roger, and kept repeating, “I’m so glad, so glad for Roger.”