Confident that she would not take offense he slid the lines on Indian
Summer into his breast pocket, to keep company with the lucky-stone.
The situation had become riskily sentimental and intensely stimulating
to Burr's disposition as a social trifler. He was reckless of
consequences, vain of conquest over any woman, and scrupulous only to
avoid failure in his amours. The more innocent and virtuous the
victim, the keener and more careful was he in pursuit. To entrap
unsuspecting game without exciting alarm he considered the most
exquisite art of gallantry. What sport it was to entangle this superb
creature in a web of invisible gossamer threads!

"Tell me more about your Theodosia. Have you a picture of her?"

The question and request smote the father's conscience with a
momentary compunction.

"I will tell you all about Theodosia. I like to think and speak of
her. She is my life, my soul, my ambition, my joy. Theodosia has no
fault that I can see, no trait which I do not admire and love. She
is--"

The sentence was stopped short by a startling cry--a scream. Madam
Blennerhassett sprang to her feet, trembling, and saw Dominick running
towards her. He fell at her feet exhausted, caught at her gown and
gasped:

"Harman! Harman will drown!"

She took the boy's hand and made him stand up.

"Be a man. Keep calm. Speak plain. What is the matter?"

"O mother! He wouldn't mind me! He pushed a rotten, old leaky dugout
from the sandbar and climbed in, with a piece of paddle, and got out
so far that the current caught him."

"What sandbar? Which channel?"

"This side. The Ohio side."

The mother suddenly grew faint. Speech forsook her tongue. The trees
vanished and the air was a blur, through which she saw a moving shape
that looked the shadow of a human figure. All this in an instant. The
swoon passed, the trees reappeared, the shadow took the form of Aaron
Burr, tugging at a chain which fastened a skiff to a timber of the
scow. A violent jerk wrenched out the strong staple that held the
chain padlocked to the ferryboat, and the mother saw the colonel leap
into the skiff, seize the oars, and launch out into midstream. This
natural act, heroic in her esteem, she saw and her heart grew big with
gratitude. She beheld another sight which caused at once a shock of
hope and a shudder of despair. She had hurried to the deck of the scow
to get an unobstructed view of the river both up stream and down.
Dominick at her side