ntly for her needs, whatever her
decision.

In this way she left England in the spring of 1786, reaching Naples on
the 26th of April. When the poor girl, after many of her letters to
her lover remained unanswered, fully realized, that the separation was
final, her grief was extreme, and found utterance in words of
tenderness and desolation, which, however undisciplined in expression,
are marked by genuine pathos. But anger struggled with sorrow for the
mastery in her soul. She was too keen-witted not to have had an
inkling of the possible outcome of her departure from England, and of
the doubtful position she was occupying at Naples; but her wishes had
made her willingly deaf to any false ring in the assurances given her
by Greville, and she resented not only the abandonment, but the deceit
which she, justly or unjustly, conceived to have been practised, while
her womanliness revolted from the cold-blooded advice given by him to
accept the situation. The conflict was so sharp that for a time both
he and Hamilton expected she would return to England; but Greville had
not labored in vain at what he was pleased to consider her education.
By the end of the year she was addressing Hamilton in words of very
fairly assumed affection, but not until she had written to Greville,
with a certain haughty desperation, "If you affront me, I will make
him marry me." The threat was two-edged, for Hamilton intended
Greville to be his heir; but the latter probably gave little heed to a
contingency he must have thought very unlikely for a man of fifty-six,
who had passed his life in the world, and held Hamilton's public
position.

To effect this, however, Emma Hart now bent her personal charms,
strong purpose, and the worldly wisdom with which Greville had taught
her to assure her hold upon a man. Love, in its unselfishness, passed
out of her life with Greville. Other men might find her pliant,
pleasing, seductive; he alone knew her as disinterested. She followed
out her design with a patience, astuteness, and consistency which
attest the strength of her resolution, and her acute intellectual
perception of the advantages at her disposal. Ambition, a natural
trait with her, had been trained to self-control, in order to compass
a lowly, colorless success. Unlooked-for opportunity now held before
her eyes, distant and difficult of attainment, but not impossible, a
position of assured safety, luxury, and prominence, which appealed
powerfull