"Well, here is the rose, at any rate," he said. "Let us hope she won't disdain it as she has disdained the giver."
As he spoke he kissed the flower, and handed it to Miss Brancker.
"Pray, don't forget to tell her that my love goes with it," he added, with another laugh. "And now, goodnight; my mother will think I'm lost."
Then they shook hands and parted.
"I often wonder whether the young baggage is aware of the twelve hundred pounds standing to her credit in the books of the Dulminster Bank," he said to himself as he went along. "It would be strange if she isn't. And yet sometimes I'm inclined to think she knows nothing about it."
It was far from being his intention to go straight home. He turned into the "Crown and Cushion" as a matter of course. There was time for one last game of billiards before the house closed for the night.
Miss Brancker did not fail to give Hermia both the rose and the message. The girl smiled faintly at the latter. The flower she put in water, but neither then nor afterwards did she touch it with her lips, as Aunt Charlotte told her Frank had done before sending it.
Frank Derison's mother, who had been many years a widow, was half-cousin to Mr. Avison. At sixteen Frank had entered the Bank as junior clerk, and there he had since remained, being treated in no way differently from any other member of the staff, the relationship between himself and Mr. Avison being never recognized by the latter; a state of things which to Frank seemed exactly the reverse of that which ought to have subsisted between the two.
Nature, if she had any intentions at all in the framing of Frank Derison, certainly never intended him for a bank clerk. He hated his work: indeed it is doubtful whether he would not have hated work of any kind; but not being able to help himself, he contrived to get through it from day to day, although in a very half-hearted and perfunctory sort of way. John Brancker, however, had conceived a great liking for the handsome, careless, bright-eyed young fellow, who had always a merry laugh for everybody and everything; and he so managed to gloss over his faults and shortcomings--which, in truth, were not very glaring ones--as, with rare exceptions, to keep him from being found fault with either by Mr. Avison or Mr. Hazeldine.
From this it came to pass that by-and-bye Frank began to be a somewhat frequent visitor at Nairn Cottage, where he quite won the heart of Miss Brancker, as he did the hearts of most people with whom he was brought into contact. As time went on he and Hermia were naturally thrown much together, and each began to find in the other that sweet but dangerous quality of attraction which, as a rule, can conduce to but one result.