and I had put a bullet through
him, then all this coil would have been spared. What do you propose to
do now?"

"At the moment I am going to Fontenoy."

"I would speak, I think, to Major Edward."

"Yes: that was in my mind. If there is any right, it lies with the men
of her family. Fair, on the nineteenth of February I was at Lewis
Rand's!"

"Ah!" exclaimed his brother.

"I was admitted, as I have since come to see, by mistake, and against
orders. I found her alone in her drawing-room, and we sat by the dying
fire and we talked of this very thing, this very plot, this very Aaron
Burr--yes, and of the part a stronger than Burr might play in the West
and in Mexico! She told me that her husband was busy that night--excused
him because he was engaged with a client from the country. A client from
the country! and I, who would have taken her word against an angel's, I
sat there and wondered why she was distrait and pale! She was pale
because there was danger, she was absent because she was contriving how
she might soonest rid the house of one who was not wanted there that
night! She was dressed in gauze and gems; she had supped with Aaron
Burr--"

"I see--I see!"

"When at last I perceived, though I could not guess the reason, that she
wished to be alone, I bade her good-night, and she watched me--oh,
carefully!--through the hall and past the other doors and out of the
house. I came home through the starlight and over the snow to the Eagle.
I found you there by the fire, and you told me that Aaron Burr was in
Richmond. Then, then, Fair, I _knew_. I knew with whom Lewis Rand was
engaged, I knew who was the client from the country! The next morning I
made my inquiries. Burr had gone at dawn, muffled and secret and
swift--one man to see him off. That man, I learned to-day, was Adam
Gaudylock. He, too, was at Rand's the night before. A triumvirate, was
it not? Well, she knew, she knew--and women, too, have dreamed of
crowns!"

He rose. "I'm going to ride to Fontenoy. You can bear me witness that
I've kept away since her return. Now I shall keep away no longer. I will
speak to Major Edward. Her family may draw a circle out of which she may
not step."

"There's been," said the other, "no true reconciliation. She's only at
Fontenoy because the Churchills could not refuse a dying woman. They
speak to her as to a stranger to whom, as gentlemen, they must needs be
courteous. And she's proud, too. Unity says they are far a