bestowed on her the endearing diminutive of vixen, with a hard-
hearted adjective that I judiciously omit.

The immediate cause of this tragical flourish was never very well
understood; but in the course of the evening she had made several
attempts to fasten on his Lordship, and was shunned: certain it is,
she had not, like Burke in the House of Commons, premeditatedly
brought a dagger in her reticule, on purpose for the scene; but,
seeing herself an object of scorn, she seized the first weapon she
could find--some said a pair of scissors--others, more scandalously,
broken jelly-glass, and attempted an incision of the jugular, to the
consternation of all the dowagers, and the pathetic admiration of
every Miss who witnessed or heard of the rapture.

Lord Byron at the time was in another room, talking with Prince K--,
when Lord P-- came, with a face full of consternation, and told them
what had happened. The cruel poet, instead of being agitated by the
tidings, or standing in the smallest degree in need of a smelling-
bottle, knitted his scowl, and said, with a contemptuous
indifference, "It is only a trick." All things considered, he was
perhaps not uncharitable; and a man of less vanity would have felt
pretty much as his Lordship appeared to do on the occasion. The
whole affair was eminently ridiculous; and what increased the
absurdity was a letter she addressed to a friend of mine on the
subject, and which he thought too good to be reserved only for his
own particular study.

It was in this year that Lord Byron first proposed for Miss Milbanke;
having been urged by several of his friends to marry, that lady was
specially recommended to him for a wife. It has been alleged, that
he deeply resented her rejection of his proposal; and I doubt not, in
the first instance, his vanity may have been a little piqued; but as
he cherished no very animated attachment to her, and moreover, as she
enjoyed no celebrity in public opinion to make the rejection
important, the resentment was not, I am persuaded, either of an
intense or vindictive kind. On the contrary, he has borne testimony
to the respect in which he held her character and accomplishments;
and an incidental remark in his journal, "I shall be in love with her
again, if I don't take care," is proof enough that his anger was not
of a very fierce or long-lived kind.

The account ascribed to him of his introduction to Miss Milbanke, and
the history of their attach