Stephen saw his opportunity to make his communication, and said, quickly:
“I suspect you have been reading those articles of Simeon’s in the Scientist on the vegetation of Tierra del Fuego. They are very able. He ought to go there and verify all he has gleaned by his reading. We fully appreciate we have a remarkable man at Harmouth in our professor of botany.”
Deena colored with pleasure.
“Poor Simeon,” she said; “his limited means have stood in the way of such personal research, and then, also, the college holidays are too short for extended trips.”
“Let him throw over his classes in the cause of science,” said Stephen, with excitement. “Why, such a book as Simeon would write after an exploration of—Fuegia, let us say—would place him among the scientists of the world.”
The thought that raced across Deena’s mind was what dull reading it would be, but she recognized the impropriety of the reflection and said, simply:
“It is too bad we haven’t a little more money.”
Stephen put his hand in his breast pocket and half drew out a letter, and then let it drop back, and then he walked a little apart from Deena and looked at her thoughtfully, as if trying to readjust his previous ideas of her to the present coquetry of her appearance. The way her thoughts had flown to Simeon when a desert island existence was mooted seemed as if she did care, and Stephen hated to give pain, and yet the letter had to be answered, and the opportunity was not likely to occur again. The thing he had always admired most in his friend’s wife was her common sense—to that he trusted.
“Mrs. Ponsonby,” he said, boldly, “if Simeon had a chance to do this very thing—free of expense—would you be unhappy at his desertion? Would you feel that the man who sent him to Patagonia was doing you an unkindness you could not forgive?”
“I should rejoice at his good fortune,” she answered, calmly. “The fact that I should miss him would not weigh with me for a moment.”