The Conqueror

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.