probability of a rejection he looked full in the face, and found that he
did not believe in it, though when he looked as fully at his assurance,
that, too, became incredibly without foundation. Jacqueline's spirit
might dwell in the mountains, and never dream of the sea; she gave him
no sign, and he could not tell. The summer month went by; she returned
to Fontenoy, and he saw her no more for a long time. When she was gone,
he fell upon work like a bereaved lion upon his prey. As best he might,
he would make that hunting do. He worked at first with lonely fury,
though at last with zest. Only by this road, he knew, could he enter the
gates of Fontenoy. Success begets success; let him make himself a name,
and the gates might open! When he was not in court, or not most
diligently preparing a case, or not instructing Tom Mocket, who was on
the way to become his partner, or not busied with affairs of his patron,
or not keenly observant of the methods of the poor whites whom he hired
to tend his tobacco, he read. He read history: Clarendon, Gibbon, and
Hume; Aristotle, Bacon, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Voltaire,
Rousseau, and Tom Paine. His Ossian, Cæsar, and Plutarch belonged to his
younger days. A translation of the Divina Commedia fell into his hands,
and once he chanced to take up, and then read with the closest
attention, Godwin's Caleb Williams. From Monticello he received the hot
and clamorous journals of the day, Federalist and Republican. He studied
the conditions they portrayed with the intentness of a gladiator
surveying his arena. The Examiner, the Argus, the Aurora, the Gazette
gave, besides the home conflict, the foreign news. He missed no step of
Buonaparte's.

Thrice in these two years he had seen Jacqueline. Once he rode to church
at Saint Anne's that he might see her. She had been at the great race
when Major Churchill's Mustapha won over Nonpareil and Buckeye. The
third time was a month ago in Charlottesville. She was walking, and