The Admiral surveyed his grand-niece thoughtfully. "What do you expect to do, my dear?"
Petronella stopped on the snowy top step and looked down at him. "Who said I had anything to do with it?" she demanded.
The Admiral's old eyes twinkled. "Let me come in, and tell me about it."
Petronella smiled at him over her big muff. "If you'll promise not to stay after five, I'll give you a cup of tea."
"Who's coming at five?"
The color flamed into Petronella's cheeks. In her white coat and white furs, with her wind-blown brown hair, her beauty satisfied even the Admiral's critical survey, and he hastened to follow his question by the assertion, "Of course I'll come in."
Petronella, with her coat off, showed a slenderness which was enhanced by the straight lines of her white wool gown, with the long sleeves fur-edged, and with fur at the top of the high, transparent collar. She wore her hair curled over her ears and low on her forehead, which made of her face a small and delicate oval. In the big hall, with a roaring fire in the wide fireplace, she dispensed comforting hospitality to the adoring Admiral. And when she had given him his tea she sat on a stool at his feet. "Oh, wise great-uncle," she said, "I am going to tell you about the Man!"
"Have I ever seen him?"
"No. I met him in London last year, and--well, you know what a trip home on shipboard means, with all the women shut up in their cabins, and with moonlight nights, and nobody on deck--"
"So it was an affair of moonlight and propinquity?"
After a pause: "No, it was an affair of the only man in the world for me."
"My dear child--!"
Out of a long silence she went on: "He thought I was poor. You know how quietly I traveled with Miss Danvers. And he didn't associate Nell Hewlett with Petronella Hewlett of New York and Great Rock. And so--well, you know, uncle, he let himself go, and I let myself go, and then--"
She drew a long breath. "When we landed, things stopped. He had found out who I was, and he wrote me a little note, and said he would never forget our friendship--and that's--all."
She finished drearily, and the bluff old Admiral cleared his throat. There was something wrong with the scheme of things when his Petronella couldn't have the moon if she wanted it!
"And what can I do--what can any woman do?" Petronella demanded, turning on him. "I can't go to him and say, 'Please marry me.' I can't even think it"; her cheeks burned. "And he'd die before _he'd_ say another word, and I suppose that now we'll go on growing old, and I'll get thinner and thinner, and he'll get fatter and fatter, and I'll be an old maid, and he'll marry some woman who's poor enough to satisfy his pride, and--well, that will be the end of it, uncle."
"The end of it?" said the gentleman who had once commanded a squadron. "Well, I guess not, Petronella, if you want him. Oh, the man's a fool!"
"He's not a fool, uncle." The sparks in Petronella's eyes matched the sparks in the Admiral's.
"Well, if he's worthy of you--"
Petronella laid her cheek against his hand. "The question is not," she said, faintly, "of his worthiness, but of mine, dear uncle."
Dumbly the Admiral gazed down at that drooping head. Could this be Petronella--confident, imperious, the daughter of a confident and imperious race?
He took refuge in the question, "But who is coming at five?"
"He is coming. He is passing through Boston on his way to visit his mother in Maine. I asked him to come. I told him I was down here by the sea, and intended to spend Christmas at Great Rock because you were here, and because this was the house I lived in when I was a little girl, and that I wanted him to see it; and--I told him the truth, uncle."
"The truth?"
"That I missed him. That was all I dared say, and I wish you had read his note of assent. Such a stiff little thing. It threw me back upon myself, and I wished that I hadn't written him--I wished that he wouldn't come. Oh, uncle, if I were a man, I'd give a woman the right to choose. That's the reason there are so many unhappy marriages. Nine wrong men ask a woman, and the tenth right one _won't_. And finally she gets tired of waiting for the tenth right one, and marries one of the nine wrong ones."
"There are women to-day," said the Admiral, "who are preaching a woman's right to propose."
Petronella gazed at him, thoughtfully. "I could preach a doctrine like that--but I couldn't practice it. It's easy enough to say to some other woman, 'Ask him,' but it's different when you are the woman."
"Yet if he asked you," suggested the Admiral, "the world might say that he wanted your money."
"Why should we care what the world would say?" Petronella was on her feet now, defending her cause vigorously. "Why should we care? Why, it's our love against the world, uncle! Why should we care?"
The Admiral stood up, too, and paced the rug as in former days he had paced the decks. "There must be some way out," he said at last, and stopped short. "Suppose I speak to him--"
"And spoil it all! Oh, uncle!" Petronella shook him by the lapels of his blue coat. "A man never knows how a woman feels about such things. Even you don't, you old darling. And now will you please go; and take this because I love you," and she kissed him on one cheek, "and this because it is a quarter to five and you'll have to hurry," and she kissed him on the other cheek.
The Admiral, being helped into his big cape in the hall, called back, "I forgot to give you your Christmas present," and he produced a small package.
"Come here and let me open it," Petronella insisted. And the Admiral, without a glance at the accusing clock, went back. And thus it happened that he was there to meet the Man.
It must be confessed that the Admiral suffered a distinct shock as he was presented to the hero of Petronella's romance. Here was no courtly youth of the type of the military male line of Petronella's family, but a muscular young giant of masterful bearing. The Hewlett men had commanded men; one could see at a glance that Justin Hare had also commanded women. This, the wise old Admiral decided at once, was the thing which had attracted Petronella--Petronella, who had held her own against all masculine encroachments, and who was heart-free at twenty-five!
"Look what this dearest dear of an uncle has given me," said Petronella, and held up for the young surgeon's admiration a string of pearls with a sapphire clasp. "They belonged to my great-aunt. I was named for her, and uncle says I look like her."
"You have her eyes, my dear, and some of her ways. But she was less independent. In her time women leaned more, as it were, on man's strength."
Justin Hare looked at them with interest--at the slender girl in her white gown, at the tall, straight old man with his air of command.
"Women in these days do not lean," he said, with decision; "they lead."
A spark came into Petronella's eyes. "And do you like the modern type best?" she challenged.
He answered with smiling directness, "I like you."
The Admiral was pleased with that, though he was still troubled by this man's difference from the men of his own race. Yet if back of that honest bluntness there was a heart which would enshrine her--well, that was all he would ask for this dearest of girls.
He glanced at the clock, and spoke hurriedly: "I must be going, my dear; it is long after five."
"Must you really go?" asked the mendacious Petronella.
An hour later she was alone. The visit had been a failure. She admitted that, as she gazed with a sort of agonized dismay through the wide window to where the sea was churned by the wildness of the northeast gale. Snow had come with the wind, shutting out the view of the great empty hotels on the Point, shutting out, too, the golden star of hope which gleamed from the top of the lighthouse.
Petronella turned away from the blank scene with a little shudder. Thus had Justin Hare shut her out of his life. He had talked of his mother in Maine, of his hospital plans for the winter, but not a word had he said of those moonlight nights when he had masterfully swayed her by the force of his own passion, had wooed her, won her.
And now there was nothing that she could do. There was never anything that a woman could do! And so she must bear it. Oh, if she could bear it!
A little later, when a maid slipped in to light the candles, Petronella said out of the shadows, "When Jenkins goes to the post-office, I have a parcel for the mail."
"He's been, miss, and there won't be any train out to-night; the snow has stopped the trains."
"Not any train!" At first the remark held little significance, but finally the fact beat against her brain. If the one evening train could not leave, then Justin Hare must stay in town, and he would have to stay until Christmas morning!
Petronella went at once to the telephone, and called up the only hotel which was open at that season. Presently she had Hare at the other end of the line.
"You must come to my house to dinner," she said. "Jenkins has told me about your train. Please don't dress--there'll be only Miss Danvers and uncle; and you shall help me trim my little tree."