I dare to think of you at all were I not so sure of my power to help you—­now and always.  Think, sir, of what such a partnership—­of which the world should never be cognizant—­would mean.  I purpose to have a salon, and it shall be largely composed of your enemies.  Not a secret but that shall yield to me, not a conspiracy but that you shall be able to forestall in time.  I believe that I was born devoted to your interests.  Heart and soul I shall be devoted to them as long as I live, and whether I am permitted to know you or not.  I could ruin you if I chose.  I feel that I have the power within me even for that.  But God forbid!  I should have gone mad first.  But ask yourself, sir, if I could not be of vital assistance to your career, did we work in common.  And ask yourself other things—­and truthfully.  E.C.C

P.S.  In a meeting held here last night the two generals poured vials of their own molten iron into the veins of the rank and file, belted them together in a solid bunch, vowed that you were a dealer in the black arts and reducing them to knaves and fools.  Their words sank, no doubt of that.  But I uprooted them, and blew them away.  For I professed to be seized with an uncontrollable fit of laughter at the nonsense of forty-seven men—­the flower of the State—­terrified of a bare third, and of a man but just in his thirties.  I rapidly recounted your failures in your first Congress, dwelling on them, harping on them; and then I stood up like a Chorus, and proclaimed the victories of C’s career.  C, who had scowled when I went off into hysterics, almost knelt over my hand at parting; and the rest departed secure in your fancied destiny, their waxen brains ready for your clever fingers.  At least you will acknowledge the receipt of this, sir?  Conceive my anxiety till I know it has not fallen into the wrong hands!

A messenger brought the note directly after breakfast, and Hamilton hastily retreated with it to the privacy of his room.  His horse awaited him, but he read the epistle no less than four times.  Once he moved uneasily, and once he put his hand to his neck as if he felt a silken halter.  He smiled, but his face flushed deeply.  Her bait, her veiled threat, affected him little.  But all that was unsaid pulled him like a powerful magnet.  He struggled for fully twenty minutes with the temptation to ride to that paradise on the hill as fast as his horse would carry him.  But although he usually got into mischief when absent from Betsey, contradictorily he was fonder of his wife when she was remote; moreover, her helplessness appealed to him, and he rejected the idea of deliberate disloyalty, even while his pulses hammered and the spirit of romance within him moved turbulently in its long sleep.  He glanced out of the window.  Beyond the tree-tops gleamed the river; above were the hills, with their woods and grassy intervals.  It was an exquisite country, green and primeval; a moderate summer, the air warm but electric.  The nights were magnificent.  Hamilton dreamed for a time, then burned the letter in a fit of angry impatience.