Millbank;

The office was closed, the shutters down, and Roger gone. Frank had come too late, and he swiftly retraced his steps homeward, hoping still to be in time to tell the news before his mother. But his hopes were vain. Roger had entered the house while Frank was in the garret, and Mrs. Walter Scott heard him in his room as she passed through the hall after her interview with her son. But she was too much agitated and too flurried to speak to him just then. She must compose herself a little, and utterly forgetful of Magdalen, who was waiting for Frank, and growing impatient at his delay, she went to her own room and read the Will again to make sure that all was right and Frank the lawful heir. She could not realize it, it had come so suddenly upon her; but she knew that it was so, and she bore herself like a queen when she at last arose, and started for Roger’s room. It was the Mrs. Walter Scott of former days resurrected and intensified who swept so proudly through the hall, just inclining her head to the servant whom she met, and thinking, as she had once thought before, how she would dismiss the entire household and set up a new government of her own. There had been some uncertainty attending the future when she made this decision before, but now there was none. She held the document which made her safe in her possessions; she was the lady of Millbank, and there was a good deal of assurance in the knock, to which Roger responded “Come in.”

He was in his dressing-gown, and looking pale and worn just as he had looked ever since his return from New York. Beside him in a vase upon the table was a bouquet, which he had arranged for Magdalen, intending to send it to her with her dinner. And Mrs. Walter Scott saw it and guessed what it was for, and there flashed into her mind a thought that she would make matters right between Roger and Magdalen; she would help them to each other, and save Frank from the possibility of a mésalliance. But Mrs. Walter Scott was a very cautious woman; she always kept something in reserve in case one plan should fail, and now there came a thought that possibly Roger might contest the Will and win, and if he did, it might be well to reconsider Magdalen and her hundred thousand dollars, so she concluded that for the present it would be better not to throw Magdalen overboard. That could be done hereafter, if necessary.

She was very gracious to Roger, and took the seat he offered her, and played with her watch-chain, wondering how she should begin. It was harder than she had anticipated,—telling a man like Roger that all he had thought his, belonged to another; and she hesitated, and grew cold and hot and withal a little afraid of Roger, who was beginning to wonder why she was there, and what she wanted to say.

“Can I do anything for you, Helen?” he asked, just as he had once before, when she came on an errand which had caused him so much pain.

Then she had come to tear Magdalen from him; now she was there to take his fortune, his birthright away; and it is not strange that, cruel as she was, she hesitated how to begin.

“Roger,” she said, in reply to his question, “I am here on a most unpleasant errand, but one which, as a mother whose first duty is to her son, I must perform. You remember the Will which at your father’s death could not be found.”

She was taking it from her pocket, and Roger, who was quick of comprehension, knew before she laid the worn paper upon the table, that the lost Will was found! With trembling haste he snatched it up, and she made no effort to restrain him. She had faith in the man she was ruining. She knew the Will was safe in his hands; he would neither destroy nor deface it. He would give it its due consideration, and she sat watching him while he read it through, and pitying him, it must be confessed, with all the little womanly feeling she had left. She would have been a stone not to have pitied one whose lips uttered no sound as he read, but quivered and trembled, and grew so bloodless and thin, while his face dripped with the perspiration which started from every pore and rolled down his chin in drops. She thought at first they were tears, but when he lifted his eyes to hers as he finished reading, she saw that they were dry, but oh, so full of pain and anguish and surprise, and wounded love and grief, that his father should have disinherited him for such a cause. He knew what the clause “the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving” implied, and that hurt him more than all the rest.

Why had his father believed such a thing of his mother, and who had told him the shameful story? Leaning across the table to his sister he pointed to the clause, and moving his finger slowly under each word, said to her in a voice she would never have recognized as his, “Helen, who poisoned my father’s mind with that tale?”

Mrs. Walter Scott did not know of the letter in Magdalen’s possession, or how much Hester Floyd had overheard years before, when, with lying tongue, she had hinted things she knew could not be true, and made the old man mad with jealousy. She did not think how soon she would be confronted with her lie, and she answered, “I do not know. It is the first intimation I have heard of Squire Irving’s reason for changing his Will.”

She had forgotten her language to Lawyer Schofield the night after the funeral when the other Will was the subject of debate; but Roger remembered it, and his eyes rested steadily on her face as he said, “You do not know? You never heard it hinted that my mother was false, then?”

“Never,” she felt constrained to say, for there was something in those burning eyes which threatened her with harm if by word or look she breathed aught against the purity of poor Jessie Morton.

“Who found this Will, and where?” Roger asked her next, and with a mean desire to pay him for that look, Mrs. Walter Scott replied, “Magdalen found it. She has hunted for it at intervals, ever since she was a child and heard that there was one.”

But she repented what she had said when she saw how deep her blow had struck.

“Magda found it; oh, Magda, I would a thousand times rather it had been some one else.”

That was what Roger said, as with a bitter groan he laid his head upon the table, while sob after sob shook his frame and frightened his sister, who had never dreamed of pain like this. Tearless sobs they were, for Roger was not crying; he was writhing in anguish, and the sobs were like gasping moans, so terrible was his grief. He remembered what Magdalen had told him once of looking for the Will when she was a child, and remembered how sorry she had seemed. Had she deliberately deceived him, and, after he had told her that it was supposed to give Frank nearly everything, had she resumed her search, hoping to find and restore to her lover his fortune? Then he thought of that night with Hester, and the cobweb in Magdalen’s hair. She had been to the garret, according to her own confession, and she had looked for the missing Will then and “at intervals” since, until she had found it and sent it to him by Mrs. Walter Scott, instead of bringing it herself?

And he had loved her so much, and thought her so innocent and artless and true,—his little girl through whom he had been so terribly wounded. If she had come herself with it and given it into his hands and told him all about it, he would not have felt one half so badly as to receive it from another, and that other the cruel, pitiless woman whose real character he recognized as he had never done before. He had nothing to hope from her, nothing to hope from Frank, nothing from Magdalen. They were all leagued against him. They would enjoy Millbank, and he would go from their midst a ruined, heart-broken man, shorn of his love, shorn of his fortune, and shorn of his name, if that dreadful clause, “the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving,” really meant anything. He knew it was false; he never for a moment thought otherwise; but it was recorded against him by his own father, and after Magdalen, it was the keenest, bitterest pang of all.

Could that have been stricken out and could he have kept Magdalen, he would have given all the rest without a murmur.

As the will read, it was right that Frank should come into his inheritance, and Roger had no thought or wish to keep him from it. He did not meditate a warfare against his nephew, as his sister feared he might. He had only given way for a few moments to the grief, and pain, and humiliation which had come so suddenly upon him, and he lay, with his face upon the table, until the first burst of the storm was over, and his sobs changed to long-drawn breaths, and finally ceased entirely, as he lifted up his head and looked again at the fatal document before him.

Shocked at the sight of his distress, his sister had at first tried to comfort him. With a woman’s quick perception she had seen that Magdalen was the sorest part of all, and had said to him soothingly:

“It was by accident that Magdalen found it. She was greatly disturbed about it.”

This did not tally with her first statement, that “Magdalen had sought for it at intervals,” and Roger made a gesture for her to stop. So she sat watching him, and trembling a little, as she began dimly to see what the taking of Millbank from Roger would involve.

“Excuse me, Helen,” he said, with all his old courtesy of manner, as he wiped the sweat-drops from his beard. “Excuse me if, for a moment, I gave way to my feelings in your presence. It was so sudden, and there were so many sources of pain which met me at once, that I could not at first control myself. It was not so much the loss of my fortune. I could bear that—”

“Then you do not intend to contest the will?” Mrs. Walter Scott said.

It was a strange question for her to ask then, and she blushed as she did it; but she must know what the prospect was, while underlying her own selfish motives was a thought that if Roger did not mean to dispute the right with Frank, she would brave the displeasure of her son, and then and there pour balm into the wound, by telling Roger of her belief that he was, and always had been, preferred to Frank by Magdalen. But she was prevented from this by the abrupt entrance of Frank himself. He had heard that his mother was with Roger, and had hastened to the room, seeing at a glance that the blow had been given; that Roger had seen the will; and for a moment he stood speechless before the white face and the soft blue eyes which met him so wistfully as he came in. There was no reproach in them, only a dumb kind of pleading as if for pity, which touched Frank’s heart to the very core, and brought him to Roger’s side.

Roger was the first to speak. Putting out his hand to Frank, he tried to smile, and said:

“Forgive me, boy, for having kept you from your own so long. If I had believed for a moment that there was such a will, I would never have rested day or night till I had found it for you. I wish I had. I would far rather I had found it than—than——”

He could not say “Magdalen,” but Frank knew whom he meant, and, in his great pity for the wounded man, he was ready to give up everything to him but Magdalen. He must have her, but Roger should keep Millbank.

“I believe that I am more sorry than you can be that the will is found,” he said, still grasping Roger’s hand. “And I want to say to you now that I prefer you should keep the place just as you have done. There need be no change. Only give me enough to support myself and—and——”

He could not say Magdalen either, for he was not so sure of her, but Roger said it for him.

“Support yourself and Magdalen. I know what you mean, my boy. You are very generous and kind, but right is right. When I thought Millbank mine, I kept it. Now that I know it is not mine, I shall accept no part of it, however small.”

He spoke sternly, and his face began to harden. He was thinking of the clause, “the boy known as Roger Lennox Irving.” He could take no part of the estate of the man who had dictated those cruel words. He was too proud for that; he would rather earn his bread by the sweat of his brow than be beholden to one who could believe such things of his mother. Frank saw the change in his manner, and anxious to propitiate him, began again to urge his wish that Roger would, at least, allow him to divide the inheritance in case the will was proved, but Roger stopped him impatiently.

“It is not you, my boy, whose gift I refuse. If you cannot understand me, I shall not now explain. I’ve lived on you for years. I can never repay that, for I feel as if all my energies were crippled, so I will let that obligation remain, but must incur no other. As to proving the will,” and Roger smiled bitterly when he saw how eagerly his sister listened, and remembered the question she had asked him just as Frank came in, and which he had not yet answered, “As to proving the will, you will have no trouble there. I certainly shall make none. You will find it very easy stepping into your estate.”

Mrs. Walter Scott drew a long breath of relief and sank into her chair, in the easy, contented, languid attitude she always assumed when satisfied with herself and her condition. She roused up, however, when Roger went on to say:

“One thing I must investigate, and that is, who hid this will, and why. Have you any theory?” and he turned to his sister, who replied, “I have always suspected Hester Floyd. She was a witness, with her husband.”

“Why did you always suspect her, and what reason had you for believing there was a later will than the one made in my favor?” Roger asked, and his sister quailed beneath the searching glance of his eyes.

She could not tell him all she knew, and she colored scarlet and stammered out something about Mrs. Floyd’s strange manner at the time of the Squire’s funeral, nearly twenty years ago.

“Frank, please go for Hester,” Roger said. “We will hear what she has to say.”

Frank bowed in acquiescence, and, leaving the room, was soon knocking at Hester Floyd’s door.