"Mr. Estey!" She, too, was on her feet. She had laid a persuasive hand on his arm. "Please, you think I'm joking; but I'm not. I really mean it. If you only would do it--it would mean so much to me! And don't--don't look at me like that. I _know_ I'm not being proper, and I know ladies don't do so--what I'm doing. But when I saw it--such a splendid chance to ask you, I--I just had to do it."

"But--but--" The startled, nonplussed man stuttered like a bashful schoolboy; "it really is so--so absurd, Mrs. Darling, when you--er--stop to think of it."

She sighed despairingly, but she did not take her hand from his arm.

"Then, if"--she spoke hurriedly, and with evident embarra.s.sment--"if you won't tell me that way, won't you please tell me another? Could you--would you-- Am I _any_ like that girl, Mr. Estey?"

Mr. Donald Estey was guilty of an actual gasp of dismay. In a whirl of vexation at the situation in which he found himself, he groped blindly for a safe way out. Of course young women (young women such as he knew) did not really propose to one; but was it possible that that was exactly what this somewhat remarkable young widow was doing? It seemed incredible. And yet--

"Am I, Mr. Estey? Or do you think I could--learn?"

"Why, er--er--"

"I mean, would you--could you marry--_me_?"

Every vestige of self-control slipped from the tortured man like a garment. Conscious only of an insane desire to flee from this wretched woman who was about to march him to the altar w.i.l.l.y-nilly, he quite jerked his arm free.

"Well, really, Mrs. Darling, I--I--"

"You wouldn't, I can see you wouldn't!" There was a heartbroken little sob in her voice.

"But--but, Mrs. Darling! Oh, hang it all! What a perfectly preposterous situation!" he stormed wrathfully. "I don't want--to marry anybody. I tell you I'm not a marrying man! I--" He stopped short at the astounding change that had come to the little woman opposite.

She was staring into his face with a growing terror that suddenly, at its height, broke into a gale of hysterical laughter. She covered her face with her hands and dropped into the chair behind her.

"Oh, oh, you didn't--you didn't--but you _did_!" she choked, swaying her body back and forth. The next moment she was on her feet, facing him, a new something in her eyes. The laughter was quite gone. "You needn't worry, Mr. Donald Estey." She spoke hurriedly, and with all the wild _abandon_ of her old self. "I wasn't asking you to marry me--so you don't have to refuse." Her voice quivered with hurt pride.

"Why, of course not, of course not, my dear lady!" He caught at the straw. "I never thought--"

"Yes, you did; and you was floundering around trying to find a way to say no. I wasn't good enough for you. And that's just what I was trying to find out, too,--but it hurt, just the same, when I did find out!"

"Oh, but, Mrs. Darling, I didn't mean--"

"Yes, you did. I saw it in your eyes, and in the way you drew back. Only I--I didn't mean _you_. I never thought of your taking it that way--that I wanted to marry _you_. It was some one else that I meant."

"Some one _else_?" The stupefaction in the man's face deepened.

"Yes. You don't know him. But they said you was--_were_, I mean, like him; that what _you_ liked, he would like. See? And that's why I tried to find out what--what you did like, so I could learn to be what would please him."

The petted idol of unnumbered drawing-rooms blinked his eyes.

"You mean you were using _me_ as an--er--understudy?" he demanded.

"Yes--no--I don't know. I was just trying to walk and talk and breathe and move the way you wanted me to, so I could do it by and by for--him."

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.

It was June when Frank Gleason, in the care of a nurse and a physician, arrived at his sister's summer cottage by the sea.

For a month after his coming Frank Gleason was too ill to ask many questions. But with returning strength came an insistence upon an answer to a query he had already several times put to his sister.

"Edith, what of the Denbys? Where is Helen? Why do you always evade any questions about her?"

"She is here with me."

"Here--_still_?"

"Yes. And she's a great comfort and help to me."

"And Burke doesn't know yet where she is?"

"Not that we know of."

"Impossible--all this time!"

"Oh, I don't know. All our friends know her as 'Mrs. Darling.' The Denbys never come here, and they'd never think of looking here for her, anyway. We figured that out long ago."

"But it can't go on forever! When is she going back?"

An odd look crossed Mrs. Thayer's face.

"I don't know, Frank; but not for some time--if ever--I should judge, from present indications."

"'If ever'! Good Heavens, Edith, what do you mean?" demanded the doctor, pulling himself up in his chair. "I _knew_ no good would come of this tom-foolishness!"

"There, there, dear, never mind all this now," begged his sister.

"Please don't try to talk about it any more."