"Then do it."
Cecil wrote thus:—
"MY OWN SWEET PET!
"Do not wait dinner for me to-day, as I am forced to dine with some influential people at the club. But I shall hurry away as soon as possible, and be with you before ten. A hundred kisses.
"CECIL."
The dinner was excellent, and the guests in high spirits. The "influential people" of whom Cecil spoke, were the great Frank himself, young Hudson (the youth in training and the amphytrion), and Tom Chetsom, jolly Tom Chetsom. The wines were not spared; and by the time the smoking-room was sought for a quiet cigar and cup of coffee, to assist the slow elaborate digestion of those who had dined well, Cecil was in that peculiar state which I would christen moral drunkenness. He was not tipsy: nor near it. His walk was as steady, his eye as free in its movements, his vision as undisturbed as before dinner. But although neither in his gait nor conversation he betrayed the least influence of wine, yet within he felt a sort of torpor—the strong desire for a sensation which makes men reckless how they procure it, and which makes them passively adopt any plan likely to arouse them from the heavy deadening lethargy in which their faculties are enveloped.
The smoking-room soon became intolerable to him. He wanted movement—excitement. The theatre was proposed. They went. But the heat, the glare of the lights, the dazzle, and confusion of the whole place, made Cecil worse. They left the house.
"What shall we do?" said jolly Tom Chetsom, as they stood under the portico of Drury-lane.
Hudson proposed the Coal-Hole; but Frank reminding him that it was too early, he was distinctly of opinion that he should not go home till morning, till daylight did appear.
"I tell you what, Tom," said Frank, "isn't it one of Hester's soirées to-night? Suppose we go there: she'll be charmed to know Cis—he's half a literary man, and wholly a painter."