—these were the wise men who appeared worthy of all the admiration of a woman, attracted to them proportionally to their mass and in inverse ratio to the square of their distances. And J. T. Maston was bulky enough to exercise on her an irresistible attraction, and as to the distance between them it would be simply zero, if she succeeded in her plans. It must be confessed that this gave some anxiety to the secretary of the Gun Club, who had never sought happiness in such close approximations. Besides, Evangelina Scorbitt was no longer in her first youth; but she was not a bad sort of person by any means, and she would have wanted for nothing could she only see the day when she was introduced to the drawing-rooms of Baltimore as Mrs. J. T. Maston. The widow’s fortune was considerable. Not that she was as rich as Gould, Mackay, Vanderbilt, or Gordon Bennett, whose fortunes exceed millions, and who could give alms to a Rothschild. Not that she possessed the millions of Mrs. Moses Carper, Mrs. Stewart, or Mrs. Crocker; nor was she as rich as Mrs. Hammersley, Mrs. Helby Green, Mrs. Maffitt, Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Para Stevens, Mrs. Mintbury, and a few others. But she was the possessor of four good millions of dollars, which had come to her from John P. Scorbitt, who had made a fortune by trade in fashionable sundries and salt pork. And this fortune the generous widow would have been happy to employ for the advantage of J. T. Maston, to whom she would bring a treasure of tenderness yet more inexhaustible. At Maston’s request, she had cheerfully consented to put several hundreds of thousands of dollars at the disposal of the North Polar Practical Association, without even knowing what it was all about. With J. T. Maston concerned in it she felt assured that the work could not but be grandiose, sublime, super-excellent. The past of the Gun Club’s secretary was voucher enough for the future. It may be guessed, therefore, if she lost confidence when the auctioneer’s hammer knocked down the North Pole to Barbicane & Co. While J. T. Maston formed part of the “Co.” could she do otherwise than applaud? And thus it happened that Evangelina Scorbitt found herself chief proprietor of the Arctic regions within the eighty-fourth parallel. But what would she do with them? Or rather, how was the company going to get any benefit out of their inaccessible domain? That was the question! And if in a pecuniary sense it had much interest for Mrs. Scorbitt, from a curiosity point of view it had quite as much interest for the world at large. The trusting widow had asked a few questions of Maston before she advanced the funds. But Maston invariably maintained the closest reserve. Mrs. Scorbitt, he remarked, would know soon enough, but not before the hour had come, for she would be astonished at the object of the new association.