"She is cleverer, even, than Lady Kitty, or Susan and Kitty Livingston, by this," he mused. "She would be worth knowing, did a driven mortal but have the time to idle in the wake of so much intelligence--and beauty. Not to answer this were unpardonable--I cannot allow the lady to die." He wrote her a brief note of graceful acknowledgement, which caused Mrs. Croix to shed tears of exultation and vexation. He acknowledged her but breathed no fervid desire for another letter. It is not to be expected that maturest nineteen can realize that, although a busy man will find time to see a woman if it be worth his while, the temptations to a romantic correspondence are not overwhelming. Hamilton tore up the letter and threw it into the waste basket. Its perfume, delicate but imperious, intruded upon his brief. He dived into the basket as he heard Troup's familiar whistle, and thrust the pieces into a breast pocket. In a moment he remembered that Betsey's head would be pillowed upon that pocket at five in the afternoon, and he hastily extracted the mutilated letter, and applied a match to it, consigning women to perdition. Troup sniffed as he entered the room. "Violets and burnt paper," remarked he. "'Tis a combination I have noticed before. I wonder will some astute perfumer ever seize the idea? It would have its guilty appeal for our sex--perchance for t'other; though I'm no cynic like you and Morris." "Shut up," said Hamilton, "and get to work if you love me, for I've no time to write to St. Croix, much less waste five seconds on any woman." That afternoon he wasted half an hour in search of a bunch of redolent violets to carry home to his wife. He pinned three on his coat. V When the 17th of June approached, Hamilton, John Jay, Chancellor Livingston, and James Duane, started on horse for Poughkeepsie, not daring, with Clinton on the spot, and the menace of an immediate adjournment, to trust to the winds of the Hudson. General Schuyler had promised to leave even a day sooner from the North, and the majority of Federal delegates had gone by packet-boat, or horse, in good season. The old post road between New York and Albany was, for the greater part of the way, but a rough belt through a virgin forest. Occasionally a farmer had cleared a few acres, the lawns of a manor house were open to the sun, the road was varied by the majesty of Hudson and palisade for a brief while, or by the precipitous walls of mountains, so thickly wooded that even the wind barely fluttered their sombre depths. Man was a moving arsenal in those long and lonely journeys, for the bear and the panther were breeding undisturbed. But the month was hot, and those forest depths were very cool; the scenery was often as magnificent as primeval, and a generous hospitality at many a board dispelled, for an interval, the political anxiety of Hamilton and his companions.