doubtless inherited from him.

When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of
South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she
went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson's
Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he
returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house
as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. "Dreary, solitary,
comfortless--it was no longer home."

After her mother's death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household
and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no
loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to
the heart.

For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully
happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston.
The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake
unreservedly into his heart. "If I can see without prejudice," he
said, "there never was a finer boy."

His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to
his daughter--a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what
was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging
him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy
always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he
himself had taught her.

She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the
approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from
justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe,
indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still
President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.

The girl's heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her
lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was
overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her
absolute faith, so that all the world might see.

When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New
York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just
before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best
of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable
separation. Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they
should see each other no more.

During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr.
Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman's heart
strained beneath the b