She gasped; her eyes grew enormous. 'You art involved. You believed in the enterprise, heart and soul. You've given money to it. You went to Blennerhassett's Island and were part and parcel of the project there——'

His furious glare became opaque, his fists clenched, but he said, with a sudden deadly calm: 'You are mistaken, Theodosia. I have never been interested in your father's ambitions. Nor have I ever been to Blennerhassett's Island'. Her head jerked up. For a second, stupefaction overpowered her. She thought vaguely that she could not have heard aright. 'You have never been to the island?' she repeated blankly.

' I have not seen Colonel Burr since he came here, unbidden, and forced me to give him hospitality a year ago last October'. The crumpled ball of newspaper fell from her hand to the floor of the porch, where a vagrant breeze scudded it over the painted boards with a faint, scratching noise. She watched it until it disappeared over the edge of a step, then turned on Joseph a look of such concentrated contempt that it pierced his anger.

' I shall do my best not to interfere with your charming little fiction'. She walked rapidly away from him.

He clutched her by the shoulder. 'Wait, Theo. What arc you going to do?'

She removed herself from his touch, not violently, but as though he had been some inanimate object, a branch or a curtain, which interfered with her progress.

'I am going to prepare myself to go to Richmond.'

' You cannot. I forbid it. I will not have any of my family mixed up in this disgraceful affair. '

'Nevertheless, I shall go. And you need not consider me as belonging to your family if you do not wish to. I would prefer not to see you again.'

He recoiled. The bluster, the fury were sponged off his heavy face. His shoulders slumped. 'Theo, don't. You know I love you. It's for your protection, too. Your father is disgraced, worse than that.'

'My father is not disgraced,' she answered inflexibly. 'That he could never be. If he is in trouble, I wish to be with him. I suppose, in view of this account, that he is really in Richmond. But the rest I do not believe. I'm sure that he is not under arrest. He has done nothing to merit that. Even Jefferson's hostility could not go so far.'

Joseph heard her with renewed rage. How could she be so stubbornly blind? Her insensate belief in her father infuriated him. He barely mastered an urge to strike her, shake the white, contemptuous remoteness from her small set person.

'You're a fool!' he shouted. 'You credit nothing which does not come from your precious rogue of a father. Here, perhaps you will believe his own words.'