stay with them.

At what precise time the idea of an improper connection between her
husband and his sister was first forced upon her, she did not say; but
she told me how it was done. She said that one night, in her presence,
he treated his sister with a liberty which both shocked and astonished
her. Seeing her amazement and alarm, he came up to her, and said, in a
sneering tone, 'I suppose you perceive you are not wanted here. Go to
your own room, and leave us alone. We can amuse ourselves better without
you.'

She said, 'I went to my room, trembling. I fell down on my knees, and
prayed to my heavenly Father to have mercy on them. I thought, "What
shall I do?"'

I remember, after this, a pause in the conversation, during which she
seemed struggling with thoughts and emotions; and, for my part, I was
unable to utter a word, or ask a question.

She did not tell me what followed immediately upon this, nor how soon
after she spoke on the subject with either of the parties. She first
began to speak of conversations afterwards held with Lord Byron, in which
he boldly avowed the connection as having existed in time past, and as
one that was to continue in time to come; and implied that she must
submit to it. She put it to his conscience as concerning his sister's
soul, and he said that it was no sin, that it was the way the world was
first peopled: the Scriptures taught that all the world descended from
one pair; and how could that be unless brothers married their sisters?
that, if not a sin then, it could not be a sin now.

I immediately said, 'Why, Lady Byron, those are the very arguments given
in the drama of "Cain."'

'The very same,' was her reply. 'He could reason very speciously on this
subject.' She went on to say, that, when she pressed him hard with the
universal sentiment of mankind as to the horror and the crime, he took
another turn, and said that the horror and crime were the very
attraction; that he had worn out all ordinary forms of sin, and that he
'longed for the stimulus of a new kind of vice.' She set before him the
dread of detection; and then he became furious. She should never be the
means of his detection, he said. She should leave him; that he was
resolved upon: but she should always bear all the blame of the
separation. In the sneering tone which was common with him, he said,
'The world will believe me, and it will not believe you. The world has
made up its mind that "By" is a