e?' The presence of all-pitying purity and love
was a torture to the soul possessed by the demon of evil.

These two years in which Lady Byron was with all her soul struggling to
bring her husband back to his better self were a series of passionate
convulsions.

During this time, such was the disordered and desperate state of his
worldly affairs, that there were ten executions for debt levied on their
family establishment; and it was Lady Byron's fortune each time which
settled the account.

Toward the last, she and her husband saw less and less of each other; and
he came more and more decidedly under evil influences, and seemed to
acquire a sort of hatred of her.

Lady Byron once said significantly to a friend who spoke of some
causeless dislike in another, 'My dear, I have known people to be hated
for no other reason than because they impersonated conscience.'

The biographers of Lord Byron, and all his apologists, are careful to
narrate how sweet and amiable and obliging he was to everybody who
approached him; and the saying of Fletcher, his man-servant, that
'anybody could do anything with my Lord, except my Lady,' has often been
quoted.

The reason of all this will now be evident. 'My Lady' was the only one,
fully understanding the deep and dreadful secrets of his life, who had
the courage resolutely and persistently and inflexibly to plant herself
in his way, and insist upon it, that, if he went to destruction, it
should be in spite of her best efforts.

He had tried his strength with her fully. The first attempt had been to
make her an accomplice by sophistry; by destroying her faith in
Christianity, and confusing her sense of right and wrong, to bring her
into the ranks of those convenient women who regard the marriage-tie only
as a friendly alliance to cover licence on both sides.

When her husband described to her the Continental latitude (the
good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agreed to
form the cloak for each other's infidelities), and gave her to understand
that in this way alone she could have a peaceful and friendly life with
him, she answered him simply, 'I am too truly your friend to do this.'

When Lord Byron found that he had to do with one who would not yield, who
knew him fully, who could not be blinded and could not be deceived, he
determined to rid himself of her altogether.

It was when the state of affairs between herself and her husband seemed
darkest a