the flag, stainless, spotless, without blemish or flaw; the flag
which was "fair as the sun, clear as the moon," and to the oppressors of
the earth "terrible as an army with banners,"--he yet remembered how, as
this emblem of liberty was thus apostrophized and saluted, the tears
had rushed to his boyish eyes, and his voice had said, for his heart,
"Thank God, I am an American!"

One day he made some such remark to her. She answered, "I, too, am an
American, but I do not thank God for it."

At another time he said, as some emigrants passed them in the street,
"What a sense of pride it gives one in one's country, to see her so
stretch out her arms to help and embrace the outcast and suffering of
the whole world!"

She smiled--bitterly, he thought; and replied, "O just and magnanimous
country, to feed and clothe the stranger from without, while she
outrages and destroys her children within!"

"You do not love America," he said.

"I do not love America," she responded.

"And yet it is a wonderful country."

"Ay," briefly, almost satirically, "a wonderful country, indeed!"

"Still you stay here, live here."

"Yes, it is my country. Whatever I think of it, I will not be driven
away from it; it is my right to remain."

"Her right to remain?" he thought; "what does she mean by that? she
speaks as though conscience were involved in the thing. No matter; let
us talk of something pleasanter."

One day she gave him a clew. They were looking at the picture of a
great statesman,--a man as famous for the grandeur of face and form as
for the power and splendor of his intellect.

"Unequalled! unapproachable!" exclaimed Surrey, at last.

"I have seen its equal," she answered, very quietly, yet with a shiver
of excitement in the tones.

"When? where? how? I will take a journey to look at him. Who is he?
where did he grow?"

For response she put her hand into the pocket of her gown, and took out
a velvet case. What could there be in that little blue thing to cause
such emotion? As Surrey saw it in her hand, he grew hot, then cold, then
fiery hot again. In an instant by this chill, this heat, this pain, his
heart was laid bare to his own inspection. In an instant he knew that
his arms would be empty did they hold a universe in which Francesca
Ercildoune had no part, and that with her head on his heart the world
might lapse from him unheeded; and, with this knowledge, she held
tenderly and caressingly, as he saw, another m