"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."