“It was ’most as exciting as a regatta, and you pulled well, Evan; but you had too much ballast aboard, and Miss Wilder ran up false colors just in time to save her ship.  What was the wager?” asked the lively Joseph, complacently surveying his marine millinery, which would have scandalized a fashionable mermaid.

“Only a trifle,” answered Debby, knotting up her braids with a revengeful jerk.

“It’s taken the wind out of your sails, I fancy, Evan, for you look immensely Byronic with the starch minus in your collar and your hair in a poetic toss.  Come, I’ll try a race with you; and Miss Wilder will dance all the evening with the winner.  Bless the man, what’s he doing down there?  Burying sunfish, hey?”

Frank had been sitting below them on a narrow strip of sand, absently piling up a little mound that bore some likeness to a grave.  As his companion spoke, he looked at it, and a sudden flush of feeling swept across his face, as he replied,—­

“No, only a dead hope.”

“Deuse take it, yes, a good many of that sort of craft founder in these waters, as I know to my sorrow”; and, sighing tragically, Mr. Joe turned to help Debby from her perch, but she had glided silently into the sea, and was gone.

For the next four hours the poor girl suffered the sharpest pain she had ever known; for now she clearly saw the strait her folly had betrayed her into.  Frank Evan was a proud man, and would not ask her love again, believing she had tacitly refused it; and how could she tell him that she had trifled with the heart she wholly loved and longed to make her own?  She could not confide in Aunt Pen, for that worldly lady would have no sympathy to bestow.  She longed for her mother; but there was no time to write, for Frank was going on the morrow,—­might even then be gone; and as this fear came over her, she covered up her face and wished that she were dead.  Poor Debby! her last mistake was sadder than her first, and she was reaping a bitter harvest from her summer’s sowing.  She sat and thought till her cheeks burned and her temples throbbed; but she dared not ease her pain with tears.  The gong sounded like a Judgment-Day trump of doom, and she trembled at the idea of confronting many eyes with such a telltale face; but she could not stay behind, for Aunt Pen must know the cause.  She tried to play her hard part well; but wherever she looked, some fresh anxiety appeared, as if every fault and folly of those months had blossomed suddenly within the hour.  She saw Frank Evan more sombre and more solitary than when she met him first, and cried regretfully within herself, “How could I so forget the truth I owed him?” She saw Clara West watching with eager eyes for the coming of young Leavenworth, and sighed, “This is the fruit of my wicked vanity!” She saw Aunt Pen regarding her with an anxious face, and longed to say, “Forgive me, for I have not been sincere!” At last, as her trouble grew, she resolved to go away and have a quiet “think,”—­a remedy which had served her in many a lesser perplexity; so, stealing out, she went to a grove of cedars usually deserted at that hour.  But in ten minutes Joe Leavenworth appeared at the door of the summer-house, and, looking in, said, with a well-acted start of pleasure and surprise,—­