gazing at it with an exulting smile, this was the ejaculation that
broke from him: "Oh, what an implement of torture have I acquired in
you!" Such he rendered it by his eyes and manner, keeping her in a
perpetual alarm for its safety when in his presence. All this reads
madder than I believe he was: but she had not then made up her mind to
disbelieve his pretended insanity, and conceived it best to intrust her
secret with the excellent Dr. Baillie; telling him all that seemed to
regard the state of her husband's mind, and letting his advice regulate
her conduct. Baillie doubted of his derangement; but, as he did not
reckon his own opinion infallible, he wished her to take precautions as
if her husband were so. He recommended her going to the country, but to
give him no suspicion of her intentions of remaining there, and, for a
short time, to show no coldness in her letters, till she could better
ascertain his state. She went, regretting, as she told me, to wear any
semblance but the truth. A short time disclosed the story to the world.
He acted the part of a man driven to despair by her inflexible resentment
and by the arts of a governess (once a servant in the family) who hated
him. "I will give you," proceeds Lady Anne, "a few paragraphs
transcribed from one of Lady Byron's own letters to me. It is sorrowful
to think, that, in a very little time, this young and amiable creature,
wise, patient, and feeling, will have her character mistaken by every one
who reads Byron's works. To rescue her from this, I preserved her
letters; and, when she afterwards expressed a fear that any thing of her
writings should ever fall into hands to injure him (I suppose she meant
by publication), I safely assured her that it never should. But here
this letter shall be placed, a sacred record in her favour, unknown to
herself:--

'"I am a very incompetent judge of the impression which the last canto of
'Childe Harold' may produce on the minds of indifferent readers. It
contains the usual trace of a conscience restlessly awake; though his
object has been too long to aggravate its burden, as if it could thus be
oppressed into eternal stupor. I will hope, as you do, that it survives
for his ultimate good. It was the acuteness of his remorse, impenitent
in its character, which so long seemed to demand from my compassion to
spare every resemblance of reproach, every look of grief, which might
have said to his conscience, 'You have ma