"Maybe I'm just pissed off, but I really don't give a shit about what happens to Huma to be honest with you," one close adviser to Hillary Clinton told me recently. He was irked, in particular, at Abedin's seemingly superfluous breach of decorum during a post-election event. On the day after Hillary Clinton's stunning loss to Donald Trump, this person said, Abedin appeared within the rope line while Clinton greeted her morose and woebegone supporters. "You're staff, O.K.?" this adviser continued. "Staff is staff. You're not a principal." (A spokesperson for the Clinton campaign notes that Abedin was seated alongside the rest of the campaign's senior leadership team that morning. Abedin declined an interview request.)

In the bizarre month since Clinton's loss, few people besides the candidate herself have seen their fortunes overturned as significantly as has Abedin, 40, the glamorous and charismatic former vice-chair of the campaign. For two decades, Abedin has been a fixture inside Clinton's inner circle; she began her career as a college-aged White House intern and rose to become Clinton's deputy chief of staff at the State Department. As a former adviser to Bill Clinton once put it to me, over time Abedin morphed into "a mini Hillary" herself. She wasn't merely an aide, but rather an amalgamation of adviser, best friend, confidante, and perhaps even surrogate daughter. Abedin "inspires loyalty, and she's loyal back," one Clinton aide told Amy Chozick in her widely read dissection of Clintonworld for The New York Times Magazine, in 2014.