They had been at loggerheads as mere lads, when together they had served on General Washington's staff during the Revolutionary War. Afterward, in social and political life, they had clashed, and clashed fiercely. Now, as rivals for the interest of the volatile Betty, their smoldering hate flamed forth lurid and deathless. And thenceforth, fanned by new political and other causes, that death hate grew. It came to a head seven years later, when, in the gray of a chilly morning, the lifelong rivals faced each other, pistol in hand, in the fields beyond Weehawken Heights; and when, at the first volley, Hamilton sprang high in air, then crashed to the earth, mortally wounded. Yes, in her time Betty had--directly or indirectly--much to answer for. George Washington Bowen, in after years, swore that he was the son of Betty and of the Father of his Country. This the Jumels have fiercely denied. Among the business-men guests Croix brought to see Betty was an enormously rich old French wine merchant, Stephen Jumel by name. This was in 1804--the year of Hamilton's death. Jumel was fifty; Betty was thirty-five. Jumel was passing rich; Betty had shrewdness enough to realize that her own fortunes, under her present circumstances, depended solely on her looks and her charm. As beauty is not eternal and as charm sometimes fails to outlive it, the super-woman deemed it wise to accept the infatuated wine merchant's offer of marriage. Indeed, she is said to have angled with Napoleonic strategy for that same offer, and to have won it only after a sharp struggle of wits. Jumel was no fit opponent for her, then or ever after. From the first, they appear to have had but a single will between them--and that was hers. On April 17, 1804, Betty and Jumel were married in St. Peter's Church in Barclay Street. The wedding's record still stands in the parish archives. So does the statement made on that occasion by Betty--a statement charmingly at variance with all other records of her origin. For in the church register she wrote that she was born in 1777 and was the daughter of Phoebe and John Bowen--the latter a drowned sea captain. New York, having a somewhat tenacious memory, eyed the bride askance--or so she fancied. And, like many a later American, she sought to cover any possible reputation scars by a European veneer. She persuaded her husband to sell out some of his New York interest and to take her to Paris to live. Which, ever obedient, he did.