Mr. Donald Estey drew in his breath.
"Well, by—Jove!"
"And I'm going to." She lifted her chin determinedly. "I'm going to! And now you know—why I asked you what I did. I was hoping I—I had gained a little in all these weeks. I've been trying so hard. And before you came, when Mrs. Thayer told me you were like—like the man I love, I determined then to watch you and study you, and do everything the way you liked, if I could find out what it was. And now to have you think I was asking you to—to— As if I'd ever marry—you!" she choked. The next moment, with a wild fling of her arms, she was gone.
Alone, Mr. Donald Estey drew a long breath. As he turned, he faced his own image in the mirror across the room. Slowly he advanced toward it. There was a quizzical smile in his eyes.
"Donald, me boy," he apostrophized, "you have been rejected. Do you hear? Rejected! Jove! But what an extraordinary young woman!" His eyes left the mirror and sought the door by which she had gone.
Mr. Donald Estey did not see Mrs. Darling again during his stay. A sudden indisposition prevented her from being among the guests for some days.
CHAPTER XV
A WOMAN'S WILL
Dr. Gleason's Arctic trip, designed to cover a year of research and discovery, prolonged itself into three years and two months. Shipwrecks, thrilling escapes, months of silence, and a period when hope for the safety of the party was quite gone, all figured in the story before the heroic rescue brought a happier ending to what had come so near to being another tragedy of the ice-bound North.