But Algernon whispered to him "that nobody should
remain wholly _incognita_ to him in that house while he dipped
pen in any one of the three hundred and sixty-five inkhorns under its
awful towers!" Robert then bowed his farewell with a flushed cheek
and grave respect to his father, but gratefully separated from his
brother with a warm pressure of the hand. The old household servants
blessed him as he passed through the hall, and in a few minutes he
found himself seated in the family post-chaise and four that was to
convey him from the home of his youth and happy innocence, and, alas!
to return to it "an altered man."
When he reached Dover to embark, he fell in with the present Earl of
Tinemouth, then Mr. Stanhope, sent abroad on a similar errand with
himself. But Stanhope's was to forget a mistress--Somerset's to merit
the one he sought. The two young men were kinsfolk by birth, and they
now felt themselves so in severing from their parents. Stanhope was
in high wrath against his, and he soon rekindled the already excited
mind of Somerset to a responsive demonstration of resentment. They
determined to show that "they were not such boys as to submit any
further in passive obedience to the stern authority dominating over
them." Sir Fulke's particular charge against his son was a "womanish
softness, unworthy his loftier sex!" "Show him," cried Stanhope, that
"you have the hardihood of a true man by an immediate act of
independence.
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