ou before very long," he said, "accompanied by a
clergyman; and then you will give me your hand because I want it."

This rapid sort of wooing was pleasantly embarrassing. The lady rather
liked it; and so, on an afternoon when the sun was shining and the
leaves were rustling in the breeze, Burr drove up to Mme. Jumel's
mansion accompanied by Dr. Bogart--the very clergyman who had married
him to his first wife fifty years before.

Mme. Jumel was now seriously disturbed, but her refusal was not a
strong one. There were reasons why she should accept the offer. The
great house was lonely. The management of her estate required a man's
advice. Moreover, she was under the spell of Burr's fascination.
Therefore she arrayed herself in one of her most magnificent Paris
gowns; the members of her household and eight servants were called in
and the ceremony was duly performed by Dr. Bogart. A banquet followed.
A dozen cobwebbed bottles of wine were brought up from the cellar, and
the marriage feast went on merrily until after midnight.

This marriage was a singular one from many points of view. It was
strange that a man of seventy-eight should take by storm the affections
of a woman so much younger than he--a woman of wealth and knowledge of
the world. In the second place, it is odd that there was still another
woman--a mere girl--who was so infatuated with Burr that when she was
told of his marriage it nearly broke her heart. Finally, in the early
part of that same year he had been accused of being the father of a
new-born child, and in spite of his age every one believed the charge
to be true. Here is a case that it would be hard to parallel.

The happiness of the newly married pair did not, however, last very
long. They made a wedding journey into Connecticut, of which state
Burr's nephew was then Governor, and there Burr saw a monster bridge
over the Connecticut River, in which his wife had shares, though they
brought her little income. He suggested that she should transfer the
investment, which, after all, was not a very large one, and place it in
a venture in Texas which looked promising. The speculation turned out
to be a loss, however, and this made Mrs. Burr extremely angry, the
more so as she had reason to think that her ever-youthful husband had
been engaged in flirting with the country girls near the Jumel mansion.

She was a woman of high spirit and had at times a violent temper. One
day the post-master at what was