“I am thinking, Magda, that possibly I may have been remiss in my attentions to you since my return. I am not a lady’s man, in the common acceptation of the term; but I have never meant to neglect you; and when I have seemed the most forgetful, you have been, perhaps, the most in my mind; and the coming home at night from the business which nearly drives me crazy, has been very pleasant to me, because _you_ were there at _our_ home I will call it, for it is as much yours as mine, and I want you to consider it so. It is hardly probable that I shall ever marry. I have lived to be thirty-two without finding a woman whom I would care to make my wife, and, after thirty, one’s chances of matrimony lessen. But, whether I marry or not, I shall provide for you, as well as Frank, who should perhaps have had more of my father’s property. His mother once believed there was another will,—a later one,—which gave him Millbank, and disinherited me; but that is all passed now.” This was the first time Magdalen had ever heard the will matter put in so strong a light, and, springing to her feet, she exclaimed: “Give Millbank to Frank, and disinherit you! I never heard that hinted before. I understood that the later will merely gave more to Frank than the five thousand dollars. I never dreamed, I did not know—when I—oh, Mr. Irving, I have been such a monster!” She was ringing her hands, in her distress at having believed in and even hunted for a will which would take Millbank from Roger, who looked at her in astonishment, and asked what she meant. “Have you, too, heard of the _will_ trouble; who told you?” he asked. And with her eyes full of tears, which with a quick nervous motion of her fingers she dashed away, Magdalen replied: “Frank told me first years ago, and his mother told me again, but not of the disinheritance. She said the will was better for Frank, and I—oh, Mr. Irving, forgive me,—I hunted for it ever so much, in all of the rooms, and in the garret, where Hester found me, and seemed so angry, that I remember thinking she knew something about it if there was one, and like a silly, curious girl I said to myself, I’ll keep hunting till I find it; but I didn’t. Oh, Mr. Irving, believe me, I didn’t! Don’t look at me so, please,” Magdalen exclaimed in a tremor of distress at the troubled, sorry look in Roger’s face,—a look as if he had been wounded in his own home by his own friends. “I might have hunted more, perhaps,” Magdalen went on, too truthful to keep back anything which concerned herself; “but so much happened, and I went away to school and forgot all about it. Will you forgive me for trying to turn you out of doors.” She was kneeling by him now as he sat upon the bank, and her hands were clasped upon his arm, while her tearful face was turned imploringly to his. Unclasping her hands from his arm, and keeping them between his own, Roger said to her: