There was no longer a shadow of doubt that Mr. Grey and Magdalen bore to each other the relation of father and child. He had been satisfied with far less testimony than Magdalen required, and even she was satisfied at last, though she suggested the propriety of ascertaining from Roger if his remembrances of the woman who had left her with him tallied with Mrs. Storms’ description of Mrs. Grey as she was when she left Cynthiana. To this Mr. Grey assented, and proposed that as personal interviews were always more satisfactory than letters, Guy should go to Schodick, leaving himself and Magdalen to rest a day or so in Cincinnati, and then return to Beechwood, where Guy would join them with his report. Magdalen had half hoped he might go himself, though she knew how he must shrink from a meeting with Roger Irving, and mingled with her happiness in having found both parents and sister was a keen sense of pain as she thought how the gulf between herself and Roger was widened by the discovery of her lineage. “Roger will hate me now, perhaps,” she said to herself, when alone in her room at the hotel she sat down to rest and tried to realize her position. Guy was going early the next morning before she was up, and if she would send any message to Roger it must be written that night. Once she thought to write him a long letter, begging him for her sake and Alice’s, whom he was sure to love, to forgive her father all the wrong he had done, and to come to them at Beechwood, where he would receive a cordial welcome. But after a moment’s reflection she felt that she was hardly warranted in writing thus. His cordial welcome from all parties was not so certain. Mr. Grey had not intimated a wish to see him or hinted at anything like gratitude for all Roger had done for her. It would be pleasanter both for Roger and her father never to meet. She could not invite him to Beechwood and so with a gush of tears she took her pen and wrote to him hastily: “MR. IRVING: Can you forgive me when you hear who I am, and will you try to think of me as you did in the days which now seem so very far in the past. I have been your ruin, Roger. I have brought to you almost every trouble you ever knew, and now to all the rest I must add this, that I am the child of your worst enemy, Arthur Grey. Don’t hate me for it, will you? Alice, who is much better than I, would say it was God’s way of letting you return good for evil. I wish you would think so, too, and I wish I could tell you all I feel, and how grateful I am to you for what you have done for me. If I could I would repay it, but I am only a girl, and the debt is too great ever to be cancelled by me. May Heaven reward you as you deserve. “Your grateful MAGDALEN. “P. S.—Mr. Seymour will tell you the particulars of my strange story. You will like him. There is not a drop of Grey blood in his veins.”