There are nearly as many theories about Theodosia's fate as there are biographies of Aaron, which is saying a great deal. The most popular theory is the one which has her vessel captured by pirates and Theodosia walking the plank in long trailing robes; there is the theory of the wreck at Nag's Head, of the flight to France or Mexico, and others even more melodramatic.

I have presented the solution to the mystery which I believe to be accurate. It is based on Aaron's own conviction and is considered the most probable by the present Alston family.

I am indebted to many kind and helpful people, especially those in Charleston, Georgetown, and on the Waccamaw Neck, and I particularly wish to thank Mr. Arthur Geiger, of New York City, who has made an exhaustive study of Theodosia and has been very generous to me in suggesting material.

CHAPTER ONE

AT SIX o'clock on the morning of Midsummer Day, 1800, Aaron Burr's estate, Richmond Hill, was already well into the day's bustle of preparation for the gala dinner to be given that evening in honor of Theodosia's birthday.

The great kitchens hummed under Peggy's irritable guidance; from the dairy came the rhythmic clop-clop of the butter chums, mingled with more distant sounds of stamps and whinnies from the stables.

The newborn sun shimmered through heat haze upon the mansion's white columns and wrought-iron balustrades. It shone dazzlingly on the Hudson, whose slow-moving waters flowed but a few yards away below the house. Already the river was flecked white with sails, as sloops, schooners, and packets tacked upstream toward Albany with the incoming tide.

Half a mile from the house, in Greenwich Village, a neg lected cow lowed for her belated milking. The sound carried to the white bedroom at Richmond Hill, where Theodosia Burr, daughter to Aaron, awoke at last on this morning of her seventeenth birthday to find her room filled with a pungent perfume. She sniffed with sleepy pleasure, and lay quiet on her big bed considering this phenomenon. The gardens were too far away to carry such a decided scent, and anyway there was no breeze stirring.

It smells like roses, she thought, still held in a voluptuous drowsiness. The damask curtains which enclosed her bed were partly looped back, a concession to the warmth of June; so that, without moving, she could watch the brightly blue rectangle of sky through the window beside her.

Sunshine glistened on the linen sheet and touched her braids with red fire. It was of a peculiar color, that hair: now dark brown, now chestnut, yet always enriched by an underlying tinge of auburn.