As has been already stated, it was about a year before Mr. Hazeldine's tragical end that Frank Derison had been made the confidant by his friend Winton of a secret which the latter was not justified in revealing to anyone. He had been told that there was a deposit of twelve hundred pounds standing to the credit of Hermia Rivers, in Umpleby's Bank at Dulminster, and the news had given a spur to his lagging affections, and had decided him to propose to Hermy with the least possible delay. All his life Frank had been used to talk freely to his mother, and as soon as he reached home that evening, he did not fail to tell her what had passed between Winton and himself, as far as it related to Miss Rivers. "What a dear, noble-hearted girl she is!" he wound up by saying. "I love her to distraction, and have done so for ever so long. Of course, twelve hundred pounds isn't to be despised, but if she hadn't a shilling I should love her just the same. She's the only girl in the world I could ever be happy with." Mrs. Derison listened to the boy's rhodomontade with a smile which he took to be one of sympathy, but which in reality was one of bitterness. She had heard precisely the same sort of nonsense--in that case addressed to herself--from the lips of Frank's father a quarter of a century before; and at that time she had been simple and inexperienced enough to pin her faith to it. What had it resulted in as far as she was concerned? In Dead-sea fruit--in dust and ashes. And so would it be with any girl who might lend an ear to Frank's vows, and entrust her future to his keeping; for in him Mrs. Derison recognized an exact counterpart of his father; handsome, gay, not without a certain surface cleverness; lazy and good-natured, with a manner that rarely failed to charm, but with a heart that was thoroughly selfish at the core, although the owner of it was totally unconscious of the fact. With such natures self-deception--unconscious self-deception--is one of the primary laws of their being.