'Let them play-act if it gives them pleasure,' said Aaron in her ear. 'It will be in sober earnest before long.'

'I'll do my best,' she whispered. 'But my breath is taken away by all this. I fear I have not yet acquired the regal manner. What position will they hold in our—our empire?' 'He shall have a dukedom, and I have promised to make him Minister to the Court of Saint James's. He wants that above all else, as what Irishman wouldn't!'

She smiled, but checked it at once. Incredible and fantastic as all this might seem, it was none the less real. Had Josephine too smiled when her little corporal first said to her, 'Some day I shall be Emperor of France, my brother King of Holland, another, King of Westphalia?' For them, too, there must have been a shadowy beginning, when the vision alone sustained them, the vision and Bonaparte's unswerving belief in his destiny. And here was more than dreams, the tangible result of the forces which Aaron was molding to his ambition.

She trembled in sudden excitement.

The excitement sharpened during the weeks which they spent upon the island. Aaron came and went gaining supporters up and down the rivers. On his frequent returns he brought with him new converts and these were a mixed crew—uncouth backwoodsmen, buckskinned scouts, plantation owners from as far south as New Orleans, Frenchmen, Spaniards, even soldiers in the white-and-blue United States Army uniform. Once General Wilkinson himself came, pompous and long-winded, with sly little eyes. And him Theo could not like, though she bestowed on him a careful courtesy, knowing that he was closest of all to Aaron and vitally necessary to the cause.

She grew fond of the Blennerhassetts. How could she help but be fond of people who treated her father with worshiping awe and extended to her the heady flattery of subject to queen!

She no longer was amused by their peculiar methods of dress. They both clung to the mode fashionable in Ireland when they had left it twelve years back. Mrs. Blennerhassett, with her brocaded panniers and sweeping hats loaded with ostrich plumes, was only slightly less bizarre than her husband, who wore red smallclothes and a white peruke constantly askew above his shortsighted eyes while he peered and puttered about his domain.

Perhaps it was just as well that Blennerhassett could not distinguish a horse from a man at twenty paces, for his fair lady sometimes cast upon Aaron glances whose warmth was not entirely attributable to her reverence for royalty. And Theodosia one evening was startled, upon walking unexpectedly into the library, to come upon a tender scene.