“No, never. She would not listen to me for a moment. She admitted her love for you, and I—oh, Roger, I am a villain, but I am getting my pay. I made her think that you only cared for her as your ward or sister, when by a word I could have brought you together,—and she was proud and thought you slighted her, inasmuch as she never knew how much you were with her when she was sick. You were gone when she came to a consciousness of what was passing around her, and I did not tell her of the message you sent from the West. I wanted her so badly myself, but I failed. She left Millbank in my absence, and fate,—I guess I believe in fate more than in Providence,—led her to the Greys, and you know the rest, and why she has been cold toward you, if she has. She thought you wanted her to marry me, and I do believe she has found that the hardest to forgive, and I don’t blame her, neither would Bell. The idea of anybody’s marrying _me_!” Frank spoke bitterly, and struck his fist upon his knee as he mentioned his wife. But Roger did not heed that; he was thinking of Magdalen and what might have been had Frank spoken earlier. Perhaps it was not too late now, and his first impulse was to fly across the ocean which divided them and find her; but neither he nor Frank knew where she was, though the latter thought he could ascertain Mr. Grey’s address in New York, and would do so the first time he was in the city. He was going to New York soon, he said, and would do all he could to repair the wrong and bring Roger and Magdalen together. “You deserve her if ever a man did,” he continued, “and I hope,—yes, I know it will one day come right.”