Frankly, Will Rhett at Last Give a Damn?

For 50 years people have wondered: Did Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara ever get back together, or was it all over for the tempestuous lovers of “Gone With the Wind” when Rhett walked out the door?

Margaret Mitchell never told, and now the answer is up to Alexandra Ripley, a Virginia author chosen by Mitchell’s estate to write the sequel to the Civil War-era epic.

Ripley, 54, a native of Charleston, S.C., is not saying what she will do, but her novel appears certain to be a multimillion-dollar production.

Officials of the William Morris Agency in New York, which is handling the book for the Mitchell estate, said publishers are reading the first two chapters and will bid on the book at an auction in a week to 10 days. It is to be published in 1990.

“I just can’t talk price because we just don’t know,” said Robert Gottlieb of the Morris agency, who represents Ripley. But he said the auction price was sure to be “in a substantial multiple of millions.” Life magazine predicted it could hit $6 million.

Ripley told Life, which has contracted to run excerpts of the sequel, that she will take about 18 months to write the 1,000-page, still-untitled book.

Mitchell took 10 years to write “Gone With the Wind,” which was made into an equally famous movie in 1939, starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable.

“This one will never be mine,” Ripley said. “It’s a foster mother kind of thing. I am trying to prepare myself for a universal hatred of what I’m going to do. Yes, Margaret Mitchell writes better than I do--but she’s dead.”

Mitchell, who was killed when struck by an Atlanta taxi in 1949, refused to write a sequel to her 1936 novel, saying the story had reached its “natural and proper ending.”

But her estate announced last year that it had begun work on an authorized novel continuing the tale of Scarlett and Rhett.

T. Hal Clarke, an attorney for the estate, said the family will give Ripley a free hand, although the estate set broad guidelines for the book and has a right to refuse her manuscript.