She could afford to be gracious to the boy whom she had wronged, but when Frank threw the bomb-shell at her feet with regard to the mysterious bundle under Hester’s shawl, she drew back quickly, and demanded of her young brother-in-law what it meant. She looked very grand, and tall, and white in her mourning robes, and Roger quaked as he had never done before in her presence, and half wished he had left the innocent baby to the tender mercies of the conductor and the poor-house. But this was only while he stood damp and uncomfortable in the chilly hall, with the cold rain beating in upon him. The moment he entered the warm parlor, where the fire was blazing in the grate and the light from the wax candles shone upon the familiar furniture, he felt a sense of comfort and reassurance creeping over him, and unconscious to himself a feeling of the _master_ came with the sense of comfort, and made him less afraid of the queenly-looking woman standing by the mantel, and waiting for his story. He was at home,—his own home,—where he had a right to keep a hundred deserted children if he liked. This was what Hester had said in referring to Mrs. Walter Scott, and it recurred to Roger now with a deeper meaning than he had given it at that time. He _had_ a right, and Mrs. Walter Scott, though she might properly suggest and advise, could not take that right from him. And the story which he told her was colored with this feeling of doing as he thought best; and shrewd Mrs. Walter Scott detected it at once, and her large black eyes had in them a gleam of scorn not altogether free from pity as she thought how mistaken he was, and how the morrow would materially change his views with regard to many things. She had not seen Roger in nearly a year and a half, and in that time he had grown taller and stouter and more manly than the boy of twelve, whom she remembered in roundabouts. He wore roundabouts still, and his collar was turned down and tied with a simple black ribbon, and he was only fourteen; but a well-grown boy for that age, with a curve about his lip and a look in his eyes, which told that the man within him was beginning to develop, and warned her that she had a stronger foe to deal with than she had anticipated; so she restrained herself, and was very calm and lady-like and collected as she asked him what he proposed doing with the child whom he had so unwisely brought to Millbank.