Thus the very letter which they would have compassed land and sea to have prevented coming under his eyes, unwisely yet most fortunately kept in existence, was sent by themselves to his hands.
Without pausing to read a line of that which his aunt had written him, he tore it into fragments, flung it into the empty grate; and, bounding down the stairs and on to the street, plunged into a carriage and was whirled away, all too slowly, to the home he had left but a little space before with such widely, such painfully different emotions.
CHAPTER XIII
"I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more."
LOVELACE
Just after Surrey, for the third time, had passed through the avenue of trees, two men appeared in it, earnestly conversing. One, the older, was the same who had met Willie as he was going out, and had examined him with such curious interest. The other, in feature, form, and bearing, was so absolutely the counterpart of his companion that it was easy to recognize in them father and son,—a father and son whom it would be hard to match. "The finest type of the Anglo-Saxon race I have seen from America," was the verdict pronounced upon Mr. Ercildoune, when he was a young man studying abroad, by an enthusiastic and nationally ignorant Englishman; "but then, sir," he added, "what very dark complexions you Americans have! Is it universal?"
"By no means, sir," was Mr. Ercildoune's reply. "There are some exceedingly fine ones among my countrymen. I come from the South: that is a bad climate for the tint of the skin."
"Is it so?" exclaimed John Bull,—"worse than the North?"
"Very much worse, sir, in more ways than one."
Perhaps Robert Ercildoune was a trifle fairer than his father, but there was still perceptible the shade which marked him as effectually an outcast from the freedom of American society, and the rights of American citizenship, as though it had been the badge of crime or the strait jacket of a madman. Something of this was manifested in the conversation in which the two were engaged.