yle, about everybody's business, and home hastened George
Hale, not so much to tell Evaleen what he had heard concerning
herself, as to learn from her the solution of the mystery of
Arlington, Danvers and "the summit."

Day after day, and week after week, the shipwrights plied their tasks
with saw and hammer, with adz and mallet, constructing the vessels to
convey men and goods down the river in the Winter. A large purchase of
provisions, ham, bacon, flour, whiskey, was made in advance, and
various accoutrements were secretly collected in anticipation of
Burr's enterprise.

New gods had been set up in the sequestered home of the
Blennerhassetts. The Lares and Penates there honored were not now the
images of Emmett and Agnew, not the names of dead ancestors, but the
living spirit and example of Napoleon and the magic word Empire. No
longer could the harpsichord charm or the strings of the viol allure.
The music-books gathered dust in the alcove, and the "Iliad" stood
unopened on the shelf. Instead of rambling in the woods, or strolling
on the banks of the Ohio, or galloping to Marietta clad in a crimson
cloak, or giving banquets or balls to entertain the admiring gentry of
Belpre, Madam Blennerhassett spent busy days and anxious nights
working and planning for a potential greatness, a prospective high
emprise. A change had come over the spirit of her dream. She had
ceased to feel an interest in domestic duties and pleasures; she
neglected the simple cares of the plantation, took no satisfaction in
binding up the bruises of her slaves, or curing their ailments with
medicine and kindness; the talk of Peter Taylor about flowers and
fruit, or of Thomas Neal, concerning pet heifers, and new milk and
butter and cheese, became tedious; the jokes and laughter of the
farm-hands and dairymaids she heard with irritation; nor could the
prattle and play of her romping boys divert her mind from the one
absorbing theme--the descent of the Mississippi, the conquest of
Mexico, the creation of a New World. In close daily communion with
Theodosia, she dwelt not in a white frame house on a woody island of
the Ohio River, not in the present; but in the future, and in a marble
palace in the splendid domain of Aaron I. The two enthusiastic women,
allied in a common cause, inspired alike by the experience of wifehood
and maternity, similarly ambitious, passionate and imaginative,
reciprocated each other's sentiments and strengthened each othe