Then Magdalen burst out impulsively, “Oh, Roger, don’t look as if you were not glad. I’ve thought so much about it, and wanted to do something by way of amends. I saved all my salary, every dollar, before I knew I was Magdalen Grey, and was going to send it to you, but Guy laughed me out of it, and said you did not need it: then, when father died and I knew I was rich, my first thought was of you, and when I heard Millbank was to be sold, I said, ‘I’ll buy it for Roger if it takes every cent I am worth;’ and I have bought it, and given it to you, and you must take it and go back there and live. I shall never be happy till you do.”
She stopped here, but she was kneeling still, and her tearful, flushed face was very near to Roger, who could interpret her words and manner in only one way, and that a way which made the world seem like heaven to him.
“Magda,” he said, winding his arm around her and drawing her hot cheek close to his own, “let me ask one question. I can’t live at Millbank alone. If I take it of you, who will live there with me?”
Hester had asked a similar question, but Magdalen did not reply to Roger just as she had to the old lady. There was a little dash of coquetry in her manner, which would not perhaps have appeared had she been less sure of her position.
“I suppose Hester will live with you, of course,” she said. “She does nicely for you here. She is not so very old.”
There was a teasing look in Magdalen’s eyes, which told Roger he had nothing to fear, and raising himself up he drew her down beside him and said: “I ask you to be candid with me, Magda. We have wasted too much time not to be in earnest now. Your coming to me as you have could only be construed in one way, were you like most girls; but you are not. You are impulsive. You think no evil, see no evil, but do just what your generous heart prompts you to do. Now, tell me, darling, was it sympathy and a desire to make restitution, as you designate it, or was it love which sent you here when I had ceased to hope you would ever come. Tell me, Magda, do you, can you love your old friend and guardian, who has been foolish enough to hold you in his heart all these many years, even when he believed himself indifferent to you?”
Roger was talking in sober earnest, and his arm deepened its clasp around Magda’s waist, and his lips touched the shining hair of the bowed head which drew back a moment from him, then drooped lower and lower until it rested in his bosom, as Magdalen burst into a flood of tears and sobs. For a moment she did not try to speak; then, with a desperate effort to be calm, she lifted up her head and burst out with, “I never got your letter, never knew it was written until a few weeks ago. Father kept it. Forgive him, Roger; remember he was my father, and he is dead,” she cried vehemently, as she saw the dark frown gathering on Roger’s face. Yes, he was her father, and he was dead, and that kept Roger from cursing the man who had wronged him in his childhood, through his mother, and touched him still closer in his later manhood, by keeping him so long from Magdalen.
“Father told me at the last,” Magdalen said. “He was sorry he kept it, and he bade me tell you so. He did not dislike you. It was the name, the association; and he hoped I might forget you, but I didn’t. I have remembered you all through the long years since that dreadful day when I found the will, and it hurt me so to think you wanted me to marry Frank. That was the hardest of all.”
“But you know better now. I told you in my letter of Frank’s confession,” Roger said, and Magdalen replied, “Yes, I know better now. Everything is clear, else I had never come here to bring you Millbank, and—and, myself, if you will take me. Will you, Roger? It is leap year, you know. I have a right to ask.”
She spoke playfully, and her eyes looked straight into his own, while for answer he took her in his arms, and kissed her forehead and lips and hair, and she felt that he was praying silently over her, thanking Heaven for this precious gift which had come to him at last. Then he spoke to her and said, “I take you, Magda, willingly, gladly; oh how gladly Heaven only knows, and as I cannot well take you without the incumbrance of Millbank, I accept that, too; and darling, though this may not be the time to say it, there has already been so much of business and money and lands mixed up with our love, that I may, I am sure, tell you I am able of myself to buy the mill in Belvidere and the site of the old shoe-shop. Frank wanted me to do it, and I put him off with saying I would wait until I knew who was to live at Millbank. I know now,” and again he rained his kisses upon the face of her who was to be his wife and the undisputed mistress, as he was the master, of Millbank.