She explained her meaning, and made him understand that to a portion of the world at least it would seem highly improper for a young lady like Magdalen to live at Millbank without some suitable companion as a chaperone. She did not hint that she would under any circumstances fill that place. Neither did Roger then suspect her motive. He was a little disappointed and a little sorry, too, that any one should think it necessary for a second party to stand between him and Magdalen. He had met with many brilliant belles in foreign lands, high-born dames and court ladies with titles to their names, and some of these had smiled graciously upon the young American, and thought it worth their while to flatter and admire him, but not one of all the gay throng had ever made Roger’s heart beat one throb the faster. Women were not to him what they were to fickle, flirting Frank, and that he would ever marry did not seem to him very probable, unless he found some one widely different from the ladies with whom he had come in contact. Of Magdalen, his baby, he always thought as he had last seen her, with her shaker-bonnet hanging down her back, and eyes brimfull of tears as she leaned over the gate watching him going down the avenue and away from Millbank. To him she was only a child, whose frolicsome ways and merry laugh, and warm-hearted, impulsive manner he liked to remember as something which would still exist when he returned to Millbank. But Mrs. Walter Scott tore the veil away. Magdalen was a young lady, a girl of eighteen, and Roger began to feel a little uneasy with regard to the manner in which he would be expected to treat her. As a father, or at most as her elder brother and guardian, he thought; but he could not see the necessity for that third person at Millbank just because a few of Mrs. Grundy’s daughters might require it. At all events he would wait and see what Magdalen was like before he decided. He was to start next day for Millbank, whither a telegram had been sent telling of his arrival, and producing a great commotion among the servants.