s designs, whatever they may be! as a
conspirator with him against the peace of the country, against Virginia,
against the Republic? You have, you have,--I read it in your face! Well,
you are wrong. Oh, I will tell you the clean truth! He was tempted--he
saw below him the kingdoms of the earth--and oh, remember that around
him are not the friendly arms, the old things, the counsel of the past,
the watchword in the blood, the voice that cries to you or to my uncles
and so surely points to you the road! I will tell the whole truth. I
will not say that his mind sees always by the light by which we rest. He
has come another way and through another world. How should he think our
thoughts, see just with our eyes? He has come through night and hurrying
clouds; his way has been steep, and there are stains upon his nature. I
that love him will not deny them! He was tempted as Ludwell Cary would
not have been. Oh, perhaps if I had not been there, he would have made
his compact. But I was there! and I besought him--and that night he
swore to me--"

Cary threw out his arm with a cry. "Stop, stop! I take God to witness
that I never thought of this!"

She went on, unheeding. "He swore to me that whatever in that world of
his he had thought of Aaron Burr and of his projects, however keenly he
had seen the dazzling fortune that lay in that western country, yet, as
I had left my world for his, so would he leave that night, in this, his
world for mine! And he did so--he did so that night before the dawn!"

She raised her hand to her eyes and dashed away the bright drops. "You
have done an injustice. All this time you have thought him what that
night you called Aaron Burr. I know not where Colonel Burr is now, but
since the night of the nineteenth of February, he and my husband have
had no dealings."

"My God!" said Cary, in a low voice; then, "This is all your assurance?"

"All?" she echoed proudly. "It is enough."

He turned away and, walking to the edge of the wood, stood there,
striving for some measure of self-command. His hands opened and shut.
Lewis Rand was a perjured traitor, and it only remained to tell
Jacqueline as much.

The garden swam before his eyes, then the mist passed and he saw with
distinctness. There was a path before him that led away between walls of
box to the green and flowery heart of the place, and at the heart was a
summer-house. He saw it all again. There was the morning in June, there
was the blowing