had been named the
social queen of South Carolina, under the title of la Sainte Madam
Alston. To Theodosia, his only child, whose education he directed,
whose opinions he had shaped, whose sympathies were always with him,
right or wrong, who after her marriage scarce less than before, looked
to him for guidance, as he to her for implicit approval--to her Burr
confided every detail of his plan of conquest, every vaulting
anticipation of sovereignty. "Be what my heart desires and it will
console me for all the evils of life. With a little more determination
you will obtain all that my ambition or vanity fondly imagines." In
this strain was the father wont to appeal to the daughter, by letter.
His thoughts, like carrier pigeons, were always homing to her. Hounded
by obloquy, accused of murder, when he fled from Richmond Hill after
the duel at Weehauken, he sought security and absolution in the
sanctuary of la Sainte Alston's house in Charleston. "You and your boy
will control my fate," he had exclaimed. And now, when the
seek-no-further hung ruddy on the orchard bough, and the wild bigonia
swang in air ten thousand trumpets of red gold, Burr reappeared at the
White House of Blennerhassett, according to his promise, bringing with
him Theodosia Alston and her little son.

"Behold," said Burr to Madam Blennerhassett, in the ornate style he
had learned to use when addressing her, "this is my Sheba, to whom I
have not told the half of your bounty or the king's wisdom. She has
not come to prove him with hard questions, but to repose under his
almug trees. My daughter, Mrs. Alston."

"She is no stranger to my thoughts," said the hostess, embracing and
kissing Theodosia. "Our minds have met in our correspondence. How very
young you look, and how like your father. And the baby resembles you
both."

"No baby," chimed in Burr, cheerily. "He has grown a big boy, have you
not, Gamp? Harman must take charge of him and teach him to build
forts, play Indian, and go buccaneering in a dugout."

"What a funny name!" returned Harman, partly in self-defense.

"Gamp is his short, everyday name," explained the colonel. "It means
grandpa. But on great public occasions, when Gamp is on his dignity,
we must address him by his full title, Don Gampillo."

Theodosia valued the lightest foam-bell on the wayward surface of
fashion, yet had escaped what Burr condemned as "the cursed effects of
fashionable education," and it is needless to say that