Hamilton hastened to assure her that she was deliberately averting her intelligence from his true meaning. "You have never doubted my sincerity for a moment," he added. "You surely know what it will cost me never to see you again. There is but one cause under heaven that could have brought me to you with this decision. You may believe in my regret—to use a plain word—when you reflect upon all that you have been to me."
He was desperately afraid that her anger would dissolve in tears, and he be placed in a position from which he was not sure of emerging with a clear conscience,—and he dared take home nothing less. But Mrs. Croix, however she might feel on the morrow, was too outraged in her pride and vanity to be susceptible either to grief or the passion of love. She stormed up and down the room in increasing fury, her eyes flashing blue lightning, her strong hands smashing whatever costly offering they encountered. "Wives! Wives! Wives!" she screamed. "The little fools! What are wives for but to keep house and bring up babies? They are a class apart. I have suffered enough from their impertinent interference. Am I not a woman apart? Will you assert that there is a 'wife' in America who can hold her own with me for a moment in anything? Was I not created to reveal to men—and only the ablest, for I waste no time on fools—the very sublimation of my sex—a companionship they will find in no silly little fool, stupid with domesticity? Am I to submit, then, to be baulked by a sex I despise—and in the greatest passion that ever possessed a woman?" She stopped and laughed, bringing her lashes together and moving forward her beautiful lips. "What a fool I am!" she said. "You will come back when the humour seizes you. I had forgot that your family returned to-day. You are in your most domestic mood—and I have been inflicted with that before. But there will come an hour when neither your wife nor any other mortal power will keep you away from me. Is it not true?"
Hamilton had turned pale; his ready imagination had responded with a presentiment of many desperate struggles. He rose, and took her hand forcibly.
"No," he said. "I shall not return. Believe me, that is the hardest sentence I have ever pronounced upon myself. And forgive me if I have been rude and inconsiderate. It was the result of the desire to have the agony over as quickly as possible. I should have found the anticipation unbearable, and I do not believe it would have been more soothing to you. There is no reason why your pride should be wounded, for this is not the result of satiety on my part, but of an imperative necessity. Shake hands with me."
She wrenched her hand free and, seizing a vase, flung it into a mirror.
Hamilton retreated.
XXXVI
He had been gone just thirty-five minutes, Betsey received him with stern approval and announced that she had implicit faith in his promise to avoid Mrs. Croix in the future. But it was quite evident that his punishment was unfinished, and with due humility and some humour he bided her pleasure. Between the two women he had a lively month. Mrs. Croix wrote him a letter a day. At first it was evident that she had taken herself in hand, that her pen was guided by her marvellous intelligence. She apologized charmingly for her exhibition of temper, and for any reflection she might have made upon the most estimable of women, who (with a sigh) had the happiness to be the wife of Alexander Hamilton. She ignored his ultimatum and asked him to come at once, and talk the matter over calmly. Hamilton replied with the graceful playfulness of which he was master, but left no doubt of his continuity of purpose. After the interchange of several letters of this complexion, in which Mrs. Croix was quite conscious of revealing the ample resources of her wit, spirit, and tact, she broke down and went through every circumstance of a despairing woman fighting to recover the supreme happiness of her life. At times she was humble, she prostrated herself at his feet. Again she raved with all the violence of her nature. Her pride, and it was very great, was submerged under the terrible agony of her heart. Even passion was forgotten, and she was sincere for the moment when she vowed that she had no wish beyond his mere presence.
Hamilton was horribly distressed. He would rather she had turned upon him at once with all her tigerish capacity for hate. But he had given his word to his wife, and that was the end of it. He answered every letter, but his gallantry and kindness were pitch and oil, and it was with profound relief that he watched the gradual stiffening of her pride, the dull resentment, even although he knew it meant that an enemy, subtle, resourceful, and venomous, was in the process of making. In her final letter she gave him warning—and a last opportunity. But of this he took no notice.
Meanwhile, Betsey had led him a dance. Naturally bright, but heretofore too sheltered and happy, too undisturbed in her trust, she had done little thinking, little analysis, felt nothing but amusement for the half-comprehended vagaries of men. But jealousy and suffering give a woman, in a week, a fill of knowledge and cunning that will serve her a lifetime. Betsey developed both coquetry and subtlety. She knew that if she obtained command of the situation now, she should hold it to the end, and she was determined that this crisis should result in a close and permanent union. If she finally believed his denial, she was much too shrewd to give him the satisfaction of regaining his former mastery of her mind; but she ceased to speak of it. Meanwhile, he was devoting his energies to winning her again, and he had never found life so interesting. She radiated a new bewitchment, and he had always thought her the most adorable woman on the planet. He divined a good many of her mental processes; but if he was a trifle amused, he was deeply respectful. She was sufficiently uncertain in this new character to torment him unbearably, and when she occasionally betrayed that she was interested and fascinated, he was transported. When she finally succumbed, he was more in love than he had ever been in his life.