French gave a sigh of relief, while his imagination pictured to him a dissolving view of Polly under similar circumstances.
“The Argentine Government is fitting up an expedition,” he went on, “to go through the Straits of Magellan and down the east coast of Fuegia with a view of finding out something more exact in regard to the mineral and agricultural resources than has been known hitherto. I happen to have been in active correspondence for some time with the man who virtually set the thing going, and he has asked me to send him a botanist from here. Shall I offer the chance to your husband? He must go at once. It is already spring in that part of the world, and the summer at Cape Horn is short.”
Deena’s face grew crimson and then paled. She felt an emotion she could not believe—pure, unalloyed joy! But in a second she understood better; it was joy, of course, but joy at Simeon’s good luck.
“Could he get leave of absence right in the beginning of the term?” she asked, breathlessly.
And Stephen answered that he had never taken his Sabbatical year, and that some one could be found to do his work, though it might mean forfeiting half his salary.
Here they were joined by Polly and Ben, and as Deena made no reference to the subject they had been discussing, the talk wandered to general topics.
The sun was making long shadows and the hour to start was come. The gayety of the morning deserted Deena as they sped back to Harmouth. Her brain was busy fitting her ideas to this possible change that French had just foreshadowed, and though she was silent, her eyes shone with excitement and her color came and went in response to her unspoken thoughts.
In her mind she saw Tierra del Fuego as it looked on the map at the end of the narrowing continent, and then she remembered a picture of Cape Horn that had been in her geography when she was a child—a bold, rocky promontory jutting into a restless sea, in which three whales were blowing fountains from the tops of their heads. She reflected that it was very far away, and that in going there Simeon might encounter possible dangers and certain discomfort, and she tried to feel sorry, and all the time a wild excitement blazed in her breast. She felt as if her youth had been atrophied, and that if Simeon went it might revive, and then a great shame shook her to have allowed such thoughts, and a tender pity for the lonely man she had married obliterated self.
Stephen’s voice broke in upon her reverie.
“Have I depressed you, Mrs. Ponsonby?”