She was at this date no longer young, being by five years my senior, as also, by five years, the senior of her nephew, born from the marriage of her sister with Peters of Taunton.  This nephew was Peter Peters, who was to accompany the Boreal expedition as doctor, botanist, and meteorological assistant.

On that day of Clark’s visit to me I had not been seated five minutes with Clodagh, when I said: 

’Dr. Clark—­ha! ha! ha!—­has been talking to me about the Expedition.  He says that if anything happened to Peters, I should be the first man he would run to.  He has had an absurd dream...’

The consciousness that filled me as I uttered these words was the wickedness of me—­the crooked wickedness.  But I could no more help it than I could fly.

Clodagh was standing at a window holding a rose at her face.  For quite a minute she made no reply.  I saw her sharp-cut, florid face in profile, steadily bent and smelling.  She said presently in her cold, rapid way: 

’The man who first plants his foot on the North Pole will certainly be ennobled.  I say nothing of the many millions...  I only wish that I was a man!’

‘I don’t know that I have any special ambition that way,’ I rejoined.  ’I am very happy in my warm Eden with my Clodagh.  I don’t like the outer Cold.’

‘Don’t let me think little of you!’ she answered pettishly.

’Why should you, Clodagh?  I am not bound to desire to go to the North Pole, am I?’

‘But you would go, I suppose, if you could?’

‘I might—­I—­doubt it.  There is our marriage....’

’Marriage indeed!  It is the one thing to transform our marriage from a sneaking difficulty to a ten times triumphant event.’

’You mean if I personally were the first to stand at the Pole.  But there are many in an expedition.  It is very unlikely that I, personally—­’

‘For me you will, Adam—­’ she began.

‘"Will,” Clodagh?’ I cried.  ’You say “will”? there is not even the slightest shadow of a probability—!’

‘But why?  There are still three weeks before the start.  They say...’

She stopped, she stopped.

‘They say what?’

Her voice dropped: 

‘That Peter takes atropine.’

Ah, I started then.  She moved from the window, sat in a rocking-chair, and turned the leaves of a book, without reading.  We were silent, she and I; I standing, looking at her, she drawing the thumb across the leaf-edges, and beginning again, contemplatively.  Then she laughed dryly a little—­a dry, mad laugh.

‘Why did you start when I said that?’ she asked, reading now at random.

’I!  I did not start, Clodagh!  What made you think that I started?  I did not start!  Who told you, Clodagh, that Peters takes atropine?’

’He is my nephew:  I should know.  But don’t look dumbfoundered in that absurd fashion:  I have no intention of poisoning him in order to see you a multimillionaire, and a Peer of the Realm....’