by the means of extinguishment; increased duties on foreign commodities, that the government might be able to pay the interest on her new debts and meet her current expenses; and more than one admonition for prompt action, as the credit of the nation was reaching a lower level daily, besides sinking more hopelessly into debt through arrears of interest.  The indebtedness he divided as follows:  The foreign debt, $10,070,307, with arrears of interest amounting to $1,640,071.  The liquidated domestic debt, $27,383,917, with arrears of interest amounting to $13,030,168.  The unliquidated part he estimated at $2,000,000, and the aggregate debt of the State at $25,000,000; making a total of nearly $80,000.000.

He also hinted at his long-cherished scheme of a National Bank, and a possible excise law, and gave considerable space to the miserable condition of landed property and the methods by which it might be restored to its due value.

XVII

The talk in the drawing-room of Mrs. Croix that night was of little else but the Secretary’s Report.  Mrs. Croix, so said gossip, had concluded that this was the proper time for the demise of her recalcitrant officer, and had retired to weeds and a semi-seclusion while Mrs. Washington pondered upon the propriety of receiving her.  Her court cared little for the facts, and vowed that she never had looked so fair or so proud; Hamilton, that she shone with the splendour of a crystal star on the black velvet skies of the Tropics.  She wore, this evening, a few yards of black gauze which left bare a crescent of her shining neck and the lower arms.  Her bright hair was arranged in a mass of ringlets, after a fashion obtaining in Europe, and surmounted by a small turban of gauze fastened with a diamond sun.  Many of the men who visited her habitually called her Lady Betty, for she was one of those women who invite a certain playful familiarity while repelling intimacy.  Hamilton called her, as the fancy moved him, Egeria, Boadicea, or Lady Godiva.

Clinton came in fuming.  “It is not possible,” he cried, “that the Congress can be so mad as to be hoodwinked by this deep political scheme for concentrating the liberties of the United States under the executive heel.  ’To cement more closely the union of the States and to add to their security against foreign attack!’ Forsooth!  This assumption plan is nothing more nor less than another of his dastardly schemes to squeeze out of the poor States what little liberty he left them under the Constitution.  He could not obtain at Philadelphia all he wished for, but now that Washington has given him both reins, he laughs in our faces.  I regret that I ever offered him my hand.”

“Then our party in Congress will fight him on political grounds?” asked Mrs. Croix.