as a snake’s, had rested for a moment upon her face.  She could have said that there was in them a curious light of recognition, even a cool amusement, a sarcasm,—­the very memory of the look made for her a trouble vague, but deep!  Had he, too, given a thought to that evening, to the man whom he did not secure, and to the woman with whom he had talked of black lace and Spanish songs?  She wondered.  But why should Colonel Burr be amused, and why sarcastic?  She abandoned the enquiry and listened to the heavy lumbering up of Government cannon.  “Courts of Great Britain—­Foster’s Crown Laws—­Demaree and Purchase—­Vaughan—­Lord George Gordon—­Throgmorton—­United States vs. Fries—­Opinion of Judge Chase—­Of Judge Iredell—­Overt Act—­Overt Act proven—­Arms, array and treasonable purpose; here is bellum levatum if not bellum percussum-Treason and traitors, not potential but actual—­their discovery and their punishment—­”

On boomed the guns of the prosecution.  Jacqueline listened, fascinated for a time, but the words at last grew to hurt her so that, could she have done so unobserved, she would have stopped her ears with her hands.  The feverish interest of the scene still held her in its grasp, but the words were cruel and struck upon her heart.  She could not free herself from the brooding thought of how poignant, how burning, how deadly poisonous they had been to her, had all things been different and she forced to sit in this place hearing them launched against another than Aaron Burr, there, there at that bar!  She unlocked her hands, drew a long and tremulous breath, and, leaning a little forward, tried not to listen, and to lose herself in watching the throng below.  Her eyes fell, at once, upon Ludwell Cary.

He was standing where she had before marked him, beside a window almost opposite, his arm upon the sill, his attention closely given to the District Attorney, who was now eulogising that great patriot, General James Wilkinson.  Now, while Jacqueline looked, he turned his head.  It was as though she had called and he had been ready with his answer.

Painfully raised in feeling and driven out of habitual citadels, tense and fevered, subtly touched by the storm in the air, she found in the moment no sense of self-consciousness, no question and no movement of aversion.  She and Cary looked at each other long and fully, and with something of an old understanding; on her part a softening of pardon for the quarrel and the duel, on his a light and compassion that she could not clearly understand.  She knew that he read her thoughts, but if he, too, was remembering that evening long ago in February, he must also remember that Lewis Rand gave up, that snowy night, definitely and forever, the fevered ambitions, the too-high imaginings, the conqueror’s thirst for power; gave them up, and turned from the charmer into the path of right!  There came into her heart a longing that Ludwell Cary should see the matter truly.  He should have done