'We will forget the whole matter, my dear, and we will not disturb Joseph about your momentary vagary. There is no need for him to know. I told him to wait with the others when I saw him at the gate, for I preferred to find you myself. I am very glad I did. We will let him assume that wc have been hunting for your ring and at last recovered it.'

'Yes, Papa,' she said. She shivered suddenly.

Aaron hastened to pull her little fringed shawl about her shoulders. 'You do look tired, child. We will have a glass of wine before we go home'. He took her arm and led her briskly back to the tables.

It was late when they got home. Joseph could scarcely stifle prodigious yawns and took Theo's silence as a matter of course. They bade each other sleepy good nights. Candlesticks waited in a row upon a polished table. They each took one and lit themselves wearily up to bed.

All but Aaron. He kissed Theo on her hot forehead, bowed to the others, and vanished into the library. He placed his candle on the writing-desk and sharpened his quill. He then wrote a letter to the commanding officer of the New York garrison, and in it he requested that a certain Captain Meriwether Lewis should have his leave curtailed at once and that he be returned to his frontier post on the morrow.

Aaron reinforced this request with a delicately worded hint: 'Matters of army preferment are often brought to my notice, not only because of my official capacity, but because of my friendship with General Wilkinson, your commander-in-chief. I think you will not find me unmindful of favors.'

He sanded and sealed this missive. One of the stable boys should speed with it to Fort George at sunrise.

Upstairs in the white bedroom, Theo undressed listlessly. Her head ached. She leaned against the west window, pressing her face on one of the cool panes. The Hudson was gray and shadowy in the half-light. Her heavy eyes rested on it languidly, but presently it brought to her its eternal message of inevitability and peace. He would understand that, she thought suddenly. 'Water, parted from the sea, may increase the river's tide.'

She thought of him as someone that she had met long ago, a memory of the past. She could not even remember his face.

She put her fingers to her cheeks and found them wet with tears. This surprised her a little. She had not felt them come.

She turned from the window and climbed into her high bed She sank at once into a heavy sleep, motionless, scarcely breathing for the few remaining hours in that night.

CHAPTER SEVEN