shaded his whole life. All the
rest was a struggle with its consequences,--sinning more and more to
conceal the sin of the past. But she believed he never outlived remorse;
that he always suffered; and that this showed that God had not utterly
forsaken him. Remorse, she said, always showed moral sensibility, and,
while that remained, there was always hope.

She now began to speak of her grounds for thinking it might be her duty
fully to publish this story before she left the world.

First she said that, through the whole course of her life, she had felt
the eternal value of truth, and seen how dreadful a thing was falsehood,
and how fearful it was to be an accomplice in it, even by silence. Lord
Byron had demoralised the moral sense of England, and he had done it in a
great degree by the sympathy excited by falsehood. This had been pleaded
in extenuation of all his crimes and vices, and led to a lowering of the
standard of morals in the literary world. Now it was proposed to print
cheap editions of his works, and sell them among the common people, and
interest them in him by the circulation of this same story.

She then said in effect, that she believed in retribution and suffering
in the future life, and that the consequences of sins here follow us
there; and it was strongly impressed upon her mind that Lord Byron must
suffer in looking on the evil consequences of what he had done in this
life, and in seeing the further extension of that evil.

'It has sometimes strongly appeared to me,' she said, 'that he cannot be
at peace until this injustice has been righted. Such is the strong
feeling that I have when I think of going where he is.'

These things, she said, had led her to inquire whether it might not be
her duty to make a full and clear disclosure before she left the world.

Of course, I did not listen to this story as one who was investigating
its worth. I received it as truth. And the purpose for which it was
communicated was not to enable me to prove it to the world, but to ask my
opinion whether she should show it to the world before leaving it. The
whole consultation was upon the assumption that she had at her command
such proofs as could not be questioned.

Concerning what they were I did not minutely inquire: only, in answer to
a general question, she said that she had letters and documents in proof
of her story. Knowing Lady Byron's strength of mind, her
clear-headedness, her accurate habi