But there came a reprieve for him almost at the last moment. A couple of days before Miss Dixon was due to arrive, Mrs. Derison received a note from her in which she stated that, owing to her mother having been suddenly attacked with illness, her visit would have to be deferred. Frank's spirits rose as if by magic.
"Her visit is only put off for a little while," said Mrs. Derison coldly, as she refolded the note after reading it aloud. "Nothing is altered."
But a respite is a respite all the world over, and Frank's was one of those mercurial natures which, while they are easily depressed, are just as easily elated, and have no inclination to meet trouble half way. He wished old Mrs. Dixon no harm; still, if her illness should prove to be a lingering one, any profession of sorrow on his part would be the merest hypocrisy.
"You never seem to take into account the fact that Mildred might not care to accept my humble and unworthy self as a partner for life," he said, with a quizzical smile, to his mother.
"Mildred is a sensible young woman, and knows what is expected of her," was the only reply vouchsafed him.
When Mr. Avison gave Frank plainly to understand that he must turn over a fresh leaf, and cease frequenting the billiard-room of the "Crown and Cushion," and such-like places, he at the same time intimated to him that for some time past his movements after office hours had been watched by a person who had been employed for that purpose, and it was the fear lest this secret spy might still be similarly engaged that kept his footsteps so straight from that time forward. He had insensibly got into the habit of spending so many of his spare hours in the billiard-room that he was at a loss how to get through his evenings with satisfaction to himself now that he no longer dared be seen there. Now that his fortunes at the Bank were rising so rapidly, he began to have plenty of invitations to the houses of well-to-do people, where he met a sufficiency of pleasant society of both sexes, but where everything was conducted with an amount of propriety and decorum which to Frank became at times absolutely depressing. He hated negus and sandwiches, and having to invent polite nothings for the benefit of a pack of scandal-loving dowagers. He hated having to dance attendance on a crowd of girls, for not one of whom he cared a jot. He was a man who loved men's society, but men out of their evening clothes. He liked the freedom and abandon of the smoking-room and the tavern parlor. His pipe was dear to him, and already he had a taste for cold grog, which in the course of time might develop into a confirmed habit. Thus it will be readily understood that to Frank Derison, life of late had seemed a somewhat tame affair.
It was just about this time that he made the acquaintance of a young fellow of his own age of the name of Crofts, who was in business with his father as a solicitor at Dulminster. Mr. Crofts was engaged to an Ashdown young lady, and used to go over two or three times a week to see her, and enjoy himself generally at this party, or the other dance.
"Beastly poky little hole, Ashdown," said Mr. Crofts one evening, as he and Frank were indulging in a cigarette in the balcony of a house where they had happened to meet. "Dulminster is bad enough in all conscience, but this place is a dozen times worse."
"What can a fellow do when hard necessity ties one to it?"
"What, indeed! You haven't even a club in the place, I presume?"