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