Unfortunately the restraining influence, probably ephemeral in any event, was about to be rudely removed, permitting to flourish in unrestrained vigor the natural tendency to compel admiration and secure advantage by the spell of physical beauty, and by the exertion of natural aptitudes for pleasing in the only path to success open to her.  In 1782 Hamilton’s first wife died, and in 1784 he came to England on leave.  There he met Amy Lyon, now known as Emma Hart, in the house provided for her by Greville.  His admiration of her was extreme, and its tendency was not misunderstood by her.  He returned to his post at Naples at the end of the year.  In the course of 1785 Greville, who was now in his thirty-sixth year, decided that the condition of his fortune made it imperative for him to marry, and that as a first step thereto he must break with Emma Hart.  Hamilton’s inclination for her provided a ready means for so doing, so far as the two men were concerned; but her concurrence was not sure.  After some correspondence, it was arranged that she should go to Naples in the spring of 1786, to live there under Hamilton’s care, with the expectation on her part that Greville would join her a few months later.  Placed as she then would be, it was probable that she would eventually accept the offers made her; though it would be less than just to either Greville or Hamilton, to allow the impression that they did not intend to provide sufficiently 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.