But although Hamilton might succumb to a woman of Mrs. Reynold’s type, she could not hold him.  After liberally relieving the alleged pecuniary distress of this charmer, and weary of her society, he did his best to get rid of her.  She protested.  So did he.  It was then that he was made aware of the plot The woman’s husband appeared, and announced that only a thousand dollars would heal his wounded honour, and that if it were not immediately forthcoming, he would write to Mrs. Hamilton.

Hamilton was furious.  His first impulse was to tell the man to do his worst, for anything in the nature of coercion stripped him for the fray at once.  But an hour of reflection cooled his blood.  No one was to blame but himself.  If he had permitted himself to be made a fool of, it was but just that he should take the consequences, and not cruelly wound the woman he loved the better for his vagaries.  Moreover, such a scandal would seriously affect the high office he filled, might indeed force him to resignation; not only thwarting his great ambitions, but depriving the country of services which no other man had the ability or the will to render.  And a few moments forecast of the triumph of his enemies, not only over himself but possibly over his party, in case of his downfall, was sufficient in itself to force him to terms.  Few are the momentous occasions in which men are governed by a single motive.  Hamilton’s ambitions were welded into the future happiness and glory of the country he had so ardently adopted.  And if love of power was his ruling passion, it certainly was directed to the loftiest of ends.  To desire to create a nation out of the resources of a vast understanding, controlled by wisdom and honour, is an ambition which should be dignified with a higher name.  Small and purely personal ambitions were unknown to Hamilton, his gifts were given him for the elevation of the human race; but he would rather have reigned in hell than have sunk to insignificance on earth.  As he remarked once to Kitty Livingston, the complexity of man so far exceeds that of the average woman, complexity being purely a matter of brain and having no roots whatever in sex, that it were a waste of valuable time to analyze its ramifications, and the crossings and entanglements of its threads.  Hamilton paid the money, yielded further to the extent of several hundred dollars, then the people disappeared, and he hoped that he had heard the last of them.  Fortunately his habits were methodical, the result of his mercantile training on St. Croix, and he preserved the correspondence.

XXVI