Her happy days were at an end. She never blamed her father for
this, or for any act of his; on the contrary, she accepted without
questioning his own version of the facts, and his own view of the
morality of what he had done. He had formed her mind and tutored her
conscience. He _was_ her conscience. But though she censured him not,
her days and nights were embittered by anxiety from this time to the
last day of her life. A few months later her father, black with
hundreds of miles of travel in an open canoe, reached her abode in
South Carolina, and spent some weeks there before appearing for the
last time in the chair of the Senate; for, ruined as he was in fortune
and good name, indicted for murder in New York and New Jersey, he was
still Vice-President of the United States, and he was resolved to
reappear upon the public scene, and do the duty which the Constitution
assigned him.
The Mexican scheme followed. Theodosia and her husband were both
involved in it. Mr. Alston advanced money for the project, which was
never repaid, and which, in his will, he forgave. His entire loss, in
consequence of his connection with that affair, may be reckoned at
about fifty thousand dollars.
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