k to town at all, and next spring
everyone will have forgotten all about it. You know what people
will say: 'I thought that Greendale girl was going to marry Carthew.
I suppose nothing has come of it. Did she refuse him I wonder, or
did he change his mind?' And there will be an end of it. The end
of the season wipes a sponge over everything. People start afresh,
and, as somebody says--Tennyson, isn't it? or Longfellow?--they
'let the dead past bury its dead.'"

Lady Greendale lifted her hands in mild despair, put on her things,
and went down to the boat with Bertha.

"I have brought a book, mamma," the latter said as they went down.
"I shall tell Frank about this, though I shall tell no one else. I
always knew that he did not like Mr. Carthew. So you can amuse
yourself reading while we are talking."

"You are a curious girl, Bertha," her mother said, resignedly. "I
used to think that I understood you; now I feel that I don't
understand you at all."

"I don't know that I understand myself, mamma, but I know enough of
myself to see that I am not so wise as I thought I was, and
somebody says that 'When you first discover you are a fool it is
the first step towards being wise,' or something of the sort.

"There is Major Mallett standing at the landing, and there is the
gig. I think that she is the prettiest boat here."

The mainsail was hoisted by the time they reached the side of the
yacht, and the anchor hove short, so that in two or three minutes
they were under way.

"She looks very nice," Lady Greendale said. "I thought that she
would look much worse."

"You should have seen her yesterday, mamma, when we passed her,
with the jagged stumps of the topmast and bowsprit and all her
ropes in disorder, the sails hanging down in the water and the
wreckage alongside. I could have cried when I saw her. At any rate,
she looks very neat and trim now.

"Where is the Phantom, Major Mallett?"

"She got under way at eleven o'clock, and has gone up to
Southampton," he replied, quietly, but with a half-interrogatory
glance towards her.

She gave a little nod, and took a chair a short distance from that
in which Lady Greendale had seated herself.

"Has he gone for good?" Frank asked, as he sat down beside her.

"Of course he has," she said. "You don't suppose, after what I told
you last night, that I was going to accept him."

"I hoped not," he said, gravely. "You cannot tell what a relief it
has been to me. Of cour