"No, colonel," interrupted she, "if I really doubted the purity of your motives, you know very well that I should not be here."
"Pardon me, dear madam. Doubt is not the word: but you deem it necessary to remind me that I am only a friend."
"If anything uttered by me grated harshly on the feelings of Colonel Burr," returned the lady in a tone of much feeling, "the deep regret of both myself and Mr. Blennerhassett would plead for forgiveness."
"Then we are friends again, and may the heavens launch heaviest bolts at this head when I dream of being more—at least while your husband, my best friend, continues with us. But were you free—oh! madam! were you not the wife of another, and that other Mr. Blennerhassett, the cold formalities of friendship would pass away like the chill vapors of the night scudding before the tropical hurricane, and at your feet, I would pour out the agony that rends and consumes my heart—that your first glance kindled there. You should know what love really is."
Mrs. Blennerhassett stood transfixed, her countenance pale as the sheeted dead. For a moment she doubted the evidence of her senses. He who had just declared himself incapable of entertaining other than the most chaste and disinterested friendship for her, and had conjured the gods to crush him when he felt otherwise, had, in the same breath, declared for her the most violent passion!
She looked at Burr astonished beyond measure, while he surveyed her glorious bust, and rounded hips with the fire of passion almost scorching his veins.
Mrs. Blennerhassett was unable to speak. She knew that her husband loved Burr with fervor of devotion equal to that of Jonathan for David of old, while she entertained for the colonel the deepest respect and the most profound admiration. How could she repel his approaches as they deserved? How could she remind him of his strange inconsistancy?
"Pardon me," said Burr, at length, as if reason had resumed her sway in his distracted brain—"I am vexed beyond measure, and could cut out my tongue for betraying a secret which I had thought to carry with me to the grave. Oh! forgive me, gentlest, best, most lovely of angels! In the moment when I had resolved never—never to speak to you in any other manner than such as became our relative situations, the tide of feeling burst, tore away the flood-gate of my stern resolve. I look on you and perish, that is my history. Come, come away," continued he in a voice of heart-breaking agony, (which he well knew how to assume,) "for I am not myself. Your beauty—your transcendant loveliness maddens me, and distresses you. Let me die a thousand deaths rather than to cause you one pang. Let us go."
Still Burr did not go. He only turned as if about to seek their com-
