Theodosia stood motionless for an instant, looking at her father, then passed back into the house.
"Listen, my daughter," said Burr at length, in his eye a light that she never had known before. "You must see that man again, and bring him back into our camp! We need him. Without him I cannot handle Merry, and without Merry I cannot handle Yrujo. Without them my plan is doomed. If it fails, your husband has lost fifty thousand dollars and all the moneys to which he is pledged beyond that. You and I will be bankrupt--penniless upon the streets, do you hear?--unless you bring that man back. Granted that all goes well, it means half a million dollars pledged for my future by Great Britain herself, half as much pledged by Spain, success and future honor and power for you and me--and him. He must come back! That expedition must not go beyond the Mississippi. You ask me what to tell him? Ask him no longer to return to us and opportunity. Ask him to come back to Theodosia Burr and happiness--do you understand?"
"Sir," said his daughter, "I think--I think I do not understand!"
He seemed not to hear her--or to toss her answer aside.
"You must try again," said he, "and with the right weapons--the old ones, my dear--the old weapons of a woman!"