Category: Novels

Millbank;

Every window and shutter at Millbank was closed. Knots of crape were streaming from the bell-knobs, and all around the house there was that deep hush which only the presence of death can inspire. Indoors there was a kind of twilight gloom pervading the rooms, and the servants...

Chapters

1. CHAPTER I.

Every window and shutter at Millbank was closed. Knots of crape were streaming from the bell-knobs, and all around the house there was that deep hush which only the presence of...

2. CHAPTER II.

Hester’s advent into the kitchen was followed by a great commotion, and Ruey forgot to pour any water upon the tea designed for Roger, but set the pot upon the hot stove, where...

3. CHAPTER III.

“Oh! Roger, this is a sorry coming home,” Mrs. Walter Scott had said when Roger first appeared in view; and taking a step forward, she kissed him quite affectionately, and even...

4. CHAPTER IV.

If Frank Irving had been poor, instead of the grandson of a wealthy man, he would have made a splendid carpenter; for all his tastes, which were not given to horses, ran in the...

5. CHAPTER V.

There was to be quite a display, for the ‘Squire had lived in Belvidere for forty years. He was the wealthiest man in the place,—the one who gave the most to every benevolent ob...

6. CHAPTER VI.

Young Schofield had been asked by Mrs. Walter Scott to return to Millbank after the services at the grave were over. She had her own ideas with regard to the proper way of manag...

7. CHAPTER VII.

Mrs. Walter Scott could not easily give up her belief in a later will, and after everything about the house was quiet, and the tired inmates asleep, she went from one vacant roo...

8. CHAPTER VIII.

During the eleven years since her disappointment, Mrs. Walter Scott had never once been to Millbank. She had seen the house several times from the car window as she was whirled...

9. CHAPTER IX.

Roger was in Dresden, and very well; but his letter did not relate so much to himself and his journeyings as to matters at home. Frank, who had visited Millbank in April, had wr...

10. CHAPTER X.

Four days later Magdalen received a letter from Frank, who was inconsolable. Alice Grey had left school suddenly, without giving him a chance to say good-by. Why she had gone or...

11. CHAPTER XI.

While Mrs. Walter Scott was resting, Roger’s letters were brought in. There was one for Frank, which he carried to his own room, and one for Magdalen, who broke the seal at once...

12. CHAPTER XII.

While the events we have narrated were transpiring at Millbank, the New York train bound for Albany had stopped one summer afternoon at a little station on the river, and then s...

13. CHAPTER XIII.

Six years have passed away and we lift the curtain of our story in Charlestown, and, after pausing there a moment, go back across the bridge which spans the interval between the...

14. CHAPTER XIV.

Magdalen was very beautiful in her white, fleecy dress, which swept backward with as broad and graceful a sweep as ever Mrs. Walter Scott’s had done when she walked the halls at...

15. CHAPTER XV.

The steamer in which Roger and Frank sailed for America had reached New York three days before Magdalen believed it due. In her tasteful parlor, where her handsomest furniture w...

16. CHAPTER XVI.

Magdalen was very fresh and bright next morning when she went down to breakfast, in her white cambric wrapper, just short enough in front to show her small, trim foot and well-s...

17. CHAPTER XVII.

The holidays were over. They had been spent in New York, where, with Mrs. Walter Scott as her _chaperone_, Magdalen had passed a few weeks, and seen what was meant by fashionabl...

18. CHAPTER XVIII.

Hester Floyd was sick. Exposure to a heavy rain had brought on an attack of fever, which confined her to her bed, where she lay helpless and cross, and sometimes delirious. She...

19. CHAPTER XIX.

Hester was better. Her long sleep had done her good, and when she awoke it was evident that her fever was broken and the crisis of her disease passed. She was perfectly rational...

20. CHAPTER XX.

Magdalen had not forgotten “the loose plank,” but since the night of her adventure in the garret she had never been near that part of the building, though sorely tempted to do s...

21. CHAPTER XXI.

Frank knew she had found the will, but he did not at all realize the effect which the finding of it would have upon his future. He had not read it like Magdalen,—he did not know...

22. CHAPTER XXII.

Roger came from New York the next evening. He could not stay from Millbank any longer. He had made up his mind to face the inevitable. He would make the best of it if Magdalen a...

23. CHAPTER XXIII.

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...

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

Hester was sitting by her fire knitting a sock for Roger, and Aleck was with her, smoking his pipe in the corner, and occasionally opening his small, sleepy eyes to look at his...

25. CHAPTER XXV.

Magdalen had waited for Frank until she grew so nervous and restless that she crept back to her couch, and, wrapping her shawl about her, lay down among the pillows, still liste...

26. CHAPTER XXVI.

It was dated the very night preceding the morning when Squire Irving had been found dead by Aleck Floyd, and it commenced much like the one which Roger had guarded so religiousl...

27. CHAPTER XXVII.

“My husband:—It would be mockery for me to put the word _dear_ before your honored name. You would not believe I meant it when I have sinned against you so deeply and wounded yo...

28. CHAPTER XXVIII

The world, or that portion of it represented by Belvidere, did not receive it kindly, and when the new heir appeared in the street on the day succeeding the events narrated in t...

29. CHAPTER XXIX.

Nobody paid any attention to her on the morning following her visit to the library, except Celine, and Frank and Roger. The latter had sent her a bouquet which he arranged himse...

30. CHAPTER XXX.

“I may be foolish,” he said to Lawyer Schofield, who was often at Millbank, and who once tried to persuade him into some settlement with Frank. “I may be foolish, but I cannot t...

31. CHAPTER XXXI.

It was a quiet, old-fashioned farm-house, with gables and projections and large rooms and pleasant fireplaces and low ceilings and small windows, looking some of them toward the...

32. CHAPTER XXXII.

It was a warm morning in early August when Magdalen came fully to herself and looked around her with a feeling of wonder and uncertainty as to where she was and what had happene...

33. CHAPTER XXXIII.

Wanted,— A young woman of pleasing address, and cultivated manners, as companion for a young lady who suffers greatly from ill health and nervous depression. It is desirable tha...

34. CHAPTER XXXIV.

Magdalen felt herself growing very nervous and uneasy as the long train came slowly into New York, and car after car was detached and drawn away by horses. She was in the last o...

35. CHAPTER XXXV.

Magdalen gave one anxious glance at herself in the mirror as she sprang up, and then hastened to unbolt the door and admit Alice Grey. She knew it was Alice, though she had neve...

36. CHAPTER XXXVI.

Mr. Grey had heard from his sister that Magdalen came from Millbank, where she had lived in the Irving family until the finding of the will, and for a few moments he had felt as...

37. CHAPTER XXXVII.

The next morning was bright and beautiful, as mornings in early October often are, when the summer seems to linger amid flower and shrub, as if loth to quit the glories its own...

38. CHAPTER XXXVIII.

A day or two after Guy’s return to New York there came to Beechwood a tall, muscular-looking woman, whom Alice called Mrs. Jenks, and for whom Magdalen could see no possible use...

39. CHAPTER XXXIX.

A mystery no longer, but a living, breathing, panting woman, with wild, rolling eyes, masses of jet-black hair streaked with gray streaming down her back, and long white arms an...

40. CHAPTER XL.

All that day Magdalen stayed with Mrs. Grey, who clung to her as a child clings to its mother, and who was more quiet and manageable than she had been in many weeks. Magdalen co...

41. CHAPTER XLI.

“You are out of breath; sit there, but let me stand. I should suffocate if I were sitting down. I feel as if a hundred pairs of lungs were rising in my throat.”

42. CHAPTER XLII.

Mr. Grey was breakfasting in that leisurely, luxurious kind of way which he enjoyed so thoroughly. His morning papers were on the table beside him. He had glanced them through,...

43. CHAPTER XLIII.

That was the sign which our travellers saw after landing at the station in the little town of Cynthiana. Magdalen was the first to see it, and the first to enter a low room wher...

44. CHAPTER XLIV.

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...

45. CHAPTER XLV.

It was not possible for Mrs. Seymour to keep perfectly quiet with regard to the cause of Magdalen’s sudden journey to Cincinnati, especially as Alice herself talked and wondered...

46. CHAPTER XLVI.

Acknowledged by every one as the daughter of the Greys, caressed and idolized by Alice, petted by Aunt Penelope, and treated by Mr. Grey with the utmost tenderness and deference...

47. CHAPTER XLVII.

There was to be a wedding in St. James’s Church, Boston, and the persons most interested were Isabella Helena Burleigh and B. Franklin Irving, whose bridal cards were sent to Be...

48. did. Still he was in love with her, or thought he was, and extolled her

to his mother, but did not speak of the hundred thousand dollars as a marriage settlement, or of the arrangement about the Judge and Charlie and Grace. He would let these things...

49. CHAPTER XLVIII.

Roger had written to Frank, congratulating him upon his approaching marriage, but declining to be present at the wedding. He wished to know as little as possible of the affairs...

50. CHAPTER XLIX.

Mrs. Walter Scott knew nothing of the hundred thousand dollars settled upon Bell, or of the arrangement for the entire family to live henceforth at Millbank. She was well please...

51. CHAPTER L.

Frank had invited Roger to spend Christmas at Millbank, but Roger had declined, and had passed the holidays in his usual way at Schodick, where there had come to him a letter fr...

52. CHAPTER LI.

The Greys had been gone little more than three years and a half, and the soft winds of June were kissing the ripples of the sea on the morning when they finally embarked for Ame...

53. CHAPTER LII.

Millbank was to be sold, with all its furniture and the hundred acres of land belonging to it. Five years had sufficed for Frank to run through his princely fortune, and he was...

54. CHAPTER LIII.

It had been some consolation to Roger to know that an Irving was living at Millbank, even if it was no longer his, but to have it pass into the hands of strangers was terrible t...

55. CHAPTER LIV.

He was sleeping quietly, and his forehead was fully exposed to view, with the brown curls clustering around it, and an occasional frown or shadow flitting across it as if the pa...

56. CHAPTER LV.

That afternoon Magdalen went with Guy over the house, where she was met by Frank, and welcomed as the new mistress. Appropriating her at once to himself, Frank led her from room...

57. CHAPTER LVI.

Millbank was ready at last for its new mistress. But few changes had been made, and these in the library and the suite of rooms set apart for the bride. Her tastes were simpler...

58. CHAPTER LVII.

It was the second Christmas after Magdalen’s bridal, and fires were kindled in all the rooms at Millbank, and pantries and closets groaned with their loads and loads of eatables...