“I prefer it for you,” said Rand.  “To-night was mere unluckiness.  And he suspected nothing?”

“He went without knowing who was in the dining-room.  Lewis, what is there to suspect?”

He stood looking down upon her with a glow in his dark eyes and an unwonted red in his cheek.  “Suspect?  There is nothing to suspect.  But to expect—­there might be expectations, my Queen!”

“As long as you live you are my King” she said.  “To-night I am afraid for my King.  I do not like Colonel Burr!”

“I am sorry for that.  He is said to be a favourite with women.”

“Lewis!” she cried, “what does he want with you?  Tell me!”

So appealing was her voice, so urgent the touch of her hand, that with a start Rand awoke from his visions to the fact of her emotion.  His eye was hawklike, and his intuition unfailing.  “What did Ludwell Cary say to you?” he demanded.

She took her scarf from the floor, wound her hands in it, and clasped them tightly before her.  “When I told him,—­Mammy Chloe let him in,—­when I told him that you were busy with your client, he thought no more of it.  And then we talked of Fontenoy, and he read me a letter from Uncle Edward.  Much of the letter was about Colonel Burr, and—­and suspicions that were aroused.  Uncle Edward called him a traitor and a maker of traitors.  That is an ugly name, is it not?  Ludwell Cary did not think the rumour false.  He said that if he were Mr. Jefferson, he would arrest Colonel Burr.  He, also, called him traitor.  I can tell you what he said.  He said, ’But Mr. Jefferson will temporize, and Burr will make his dash for a throne.  Well! he is neither Caesar nor Buonaparte; he is only Aaron Burr.  The danger is that in all the motley he is enlisting there may be a Buonaparte.  Then farewell to this poor schemer and any delusions he may yet nourish as to a peaceful, federated West!  War and brazen clamour and the yelling eagles of a conqueror!’ That is what he said.”

There was a silence, then Rand spoke in a curious voice, “Saul among the prophets!  In the future, let us have less of Ludwell Cary.”

“Lewis, why did Colonel Burr come here to-night?”

Rand turned from the fire and began to pace the room, head bent and hand at mouth, thinking rapidly.  His wife raised her hands, still wrapped in the silver scarf, to her heart, and waited.  As he passed for the third time the tall harp, he drew his hand heavily across the strings.  The room vibrated to the sound.  Rand came back to the hearth, took the armchair in which Cary had sat, and drew it closer to the glowing embers.  “Come,” he said.  “Come, Jacqueline, let us look at the pictures in the fire.”

She knelt beside him on the braided rug.  “Show me true pictures!  Home in Virginia, and honourable life, and noble service, and my King a King indeed, and this Colonel Burr gone like a shadow and an ugly dream!—­that is the picture I want to see.”