toward
him impetuously, with a quick motion of her hands. "Ah, forgive me!" she
cried. "I know--I know. I was told of the quarrel next day in the coffee
house. I--I was more sorry than I can say. I understood. You could not,
after that, come again to the house. Oh, more than almost anything, I
wish that you and Lewis were friends! It is wrong to try to make you
think that that evening does not live in my memory. It does--it does!"

"I am willing to believe as much," he returned, with a strange dryness.
"I know that you remember that evening, but I hardly think it altogether
on my account--"

The colour faded from her cheek. "On whose, then? My husband's?"

"And your guest's."

"You were my guest."

"Oh," cried Cary, "I'll not have it! You shall not so perjure yourself!
He has taken much from me; if your truth is his as well, then indeed he
has taken all! I know, I know who was the guest that night, the man with
whom you supped, the 'client from the country.'"

She gazed at him with large eyes, her hand upon her heart, then, with an
inarticulate word or two, she moved to the gnarled and protruding roots
of the cedar and took her seat there facing his troubled figure and
indignant eyes. "Who was the guest,--the client from the country?"

"Aaron Burr."

She drew a difficult breath. "How long have you known?"

"Since that night. No--do not be distressed! I learned it not from
you,--you kept faithful guard. But when I left you, within the hour I
knew it."

"And--and if he were there, what harm?"

Cary regarded her in silence; then, "The letter that I read you that
night from your uncle, from one of the heads of your house, from a
patriot and a man of stainless honour, that letter was, I think,
sufficiently explicit! There was the harm. But Major Churchill's
opinion, too, is perhaps forgot."

"No," cried Jacqueline, "no; you do not understand! Listen to me!" She
rose, drawing herself to her full height, the red again in her cheek,
her eyes dark and bright. "I am going to tell you the truth of this
matter. Are you not my friend, whose opinion I value for me and mine?
You are a true and honourable gentleman--I speak with no fear that what
I say will ever pass beyond this wood! Uncle Edward's letter! You think
that what was said in Uncle Edward's letter--ay, and what you, too, said
in comment--was already known to me that night! Well, it was not. Oh,
it is true that Colonel Burr had supped with us, and it is also