"I marry Mildred Dixon! The notion is too utterly preposterous. In the first place she's six years older than I am. Then she's awfully freckled, and wears spectacles, and has a squat figure. I'd as soon marry my grandmother, if the old lady were alive."
"What have either her looks or her age to do with the affair? Miss Dixon is both accomplished and amiable, and has, in addition, a fortune of twenty thousand pounds."
Frank bit his nails for a few moments as if deep in thought; then looking up, he said:
"Mother, this thing is not a suggestion of your own. I can pretty well guess the quarter from whence it emanates."
"And what then? Is not your welfare at the bottom of the scheme? People at the head of a prosperous concern don't usually choose a virtual beggar for their partner; but no one could call a man with twenty thousand pounds at his back by any such title!"
So that was how the wind lay! Frank felt that the golden shackles were being riveted upon him one by one. He had thrown over--like the mean cur he knew himself to be--the only girl he could ever really love, and now he was called on to sell his freedom.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
THE DOWNWARD PATH. A PROPOSAL.
Frank Derison looked forward to the arrival of his cousin with much disfavor. Under any circumstances it would have seemed to him bad enough that his future should be cut-and-dried for him as if he were still a child in leading-strings, and that a bride should be thrust on him without as much as a "by your leave," but, as the case stood, it was rendered still more obnoxious by the fact that Fate had chosen for him a wife for whom he could never feel even that tepid amount of affection which seems to be found an amply sufficient capital in the majority of matrimonial ventures. As a cousin Miss Dixon might be everything one could wish, but as a wife he felt that before long he should positively hate her. Frank's affections, fleeting and shallow as they were, could only be captured by youth and good looks, and unfortunately Miss Dixon could boast of neither. When he compared her in his thoughts with sweet Hermia Rivers, and called to mind all that he had flung away, his heart grew very bitter within him, and he often felt that he would gladly cast behind him all his chances of worldly advancement if, by so doing, he could bring back those pleasant evenings of six months ago when he was a welcome visitant at Nairn Cottage, and when Hermia ever greeted his coming with a smile, the like of which for him the world did not hold. Oh, fool--fool that he had been!
But Frank was a man of many moods, and there were times when the cold whispers of worldly prudence fell soothingly on his ear. Twenty thousand pounds! It was a large sum, but, large as it was, it was only intended by those who had taken his future into their charge as the stepping-stone to something larger still. He was as fully assured as if his mother had told him in so many words, that his marriage with Miss Dixon was looked upon as a necessary condition, and that, unless he acceded to it, he need look for no further advancement at the Bank. The price demanded was a heavy one, or so it seemed to him. He knew fully a dozen girls, any one of whom (his lingering love for Hermia notwithstanding) he would willingly have married, even with half of twenty thousand pounds for a dowry. But Mildred Dixon, with her six years' seniority, her freckles, her spectacles, and her squat figure! Poor Frank could not help feeling that fate was treating him very hardly indeed.