England, but even before his departure, which among men was regarded as final, she had achieved a reputation as a lady of erratic impulse and imperious habit.  That she was also the most brilliant and fascinating woman in America, as well as the most beautiful, were facts as publicly established.  Hamilton had resisted the temptation to meet her, the temptation receiving no help from indifference on the part of the lady; he had answered more than one note of admirable deftness.  But he had no intention of being drawn into an intrigue which would be public gossip in a day and ruin the happiness of his wife.  To expect a man of Hamilton’s order of genius to keep faith with one woman for a lifetime would be as reasonable as to look for such genius without the transcendent passions which are its furnace; but he was far from being a man who sought adventure.  Under certain conditions his horizon abruptly contracted, and life was dual and isolated; but when the opportunity had passed he dismissed its memory with contrite philosophy, and was so charming to Betsey that he persuaded himself, as her, that he wished never to behold the face of another woman.  Nor did he—­overwhelming temptation being absent:  he was the most driven man in the United States, with no time to run about after women, had such been his proclivity; and his romantic temperament, having found high satisfaction in his courtship and marriage with one of the most bewitching and notable girls in America, was smothered under a mountain of work and domestic bliss.  So, although well aware that his will must perish at times in the blaze of his passions, he was iron against the temptation that held itself sufficiently aloof.  To an extreme point he was master of himself.  He knew that it would be no whirlwind and forgetting with this mysterious woman, who had set the town talking, and yet whose social talents were so remarkable that she managed women as deftly as she did men, and was a welcome guest in many of the most exclusive houses in New York; the men were careful to do none of their gossiping at home, and the women, although they criticised, and vowed themselves scandalized, succumbed to her royal command of homage and her air of proud invincibility.  That she loved him, he had reason to know, and although he regarded it as a young woman’s romantic passion for a public man focussing the attention of the country, and whom, from pressure of affairs, it was almost impossible to meet, still the passion existed, and, considering her beauty and talents, was too likely to communicate itself to the object, were he rash enough to create the opportunity.  Hamilton’s morals were the morals of his day,—­a day when aristocrats were libertines, receiving as little censure from society as from their own consciences.  His Scotch foundations had religious shoots in their grassy crevices, but religion in a great mind like Hamilton’s is an emotional incident, one of several passions which act independently of each other.