e to live
like one, and the man who presumes to take a liberty with him is lost."

Mrs. Croix, quite forgotten, leaned back in her chair, a smile
succeeding the puzzled annoyance of her eyes. In this house her words
were the jewels for which this courtly company scrambled, but Hamilton
had not been met abroad for weeks, and from him there was always
something to learn; whereas from even the most brilliant of women--she
shrugged her shoulders; and her eyes, as they dwelt on Hamilton,
gradually filled with an expression of idolatrous pride. The new delight
of self-effacement was one of the keenest she had known.

The bombardment continued. The Vice-President? Whom should Hamilton
support? Adams? Hancock? Was it true that there was a schism in the
Federal party that might give the anti-Federalists, with Clinton at
their head, a chance for the Vice-Presidency at least? Who would be
Washington's advisers besides himself? Would the President have a
cabinet? Would Congress sanction it? Whom should he want as confreres,
and whom in the Senate to further his plans? Whom did he favour as
Senators and Representatives from New York? Could this rage for
amendments be stopped? What was to be the fate of the circular letter?
Was all danger of a new Constitutional Convention well over? What about
the future site of the Capital--would the North get it, or the South?

All these, the raging questions of the day, it took Hamilton the greater
part of the evening to answer or parry, but he deftly altered his orbit
until he stood beside Mrs. Croix, the company before her shrine. He had
encountered her eyes, but although he knew the supreme surrender of
women in the first stages of passion, he also understood the vanities
and weaknesses of human nature too well not to apprehend a chill of the
affections under too prolonged a mortification.

Clinton entered at midnight; and after almost bending his gouty knee to
the hostess, whom he had never seen in such softened yet dazzling
beauty, he measured Hamilton for a moment, then laughed and held out his
hand.

"You are a wonderful fighter," he said, "and you beat me squarely. We'll
meet in open combat again and again, no doubt of it, and I hope we will,
for you rouse all my mettle; but I like you, sir, I like you. I can't
help it."

Hamilton, at that time of his life the most placable of men, had shaken
his hand heartily. "And I so esteem and admire you, sir," he answered
warmly, "that I woul