fter 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,