from time to time at their father's house in Chapel Street,
Grosvenor Square. Harriet fell in love with him: besides, he was a
highly eligible _parti_, being a prospective baronet, absolute heir to a
very considerable estate, and contingent heir (if he had assented to a
proposal of entail, to which however he never did assent, professing
conscientious objections) to another estate still larger. Shelley was
not in love with Harriet; but he liked her, and was willing to do
anything he could to further her wishes and plans. Mr. Timothy Shelley,
after a while, pardoned his son's misadventure at Oxford, and made him a
moderate allowance of L200 a-year. Percy then visited a cousin in Wales,
a member of the Grove family. He was recalled to London by Harriet
Westbrook, who protested against a project of sending her back to
school. He counselled resistance. She replied in July 1811 (to quote a
contemporary letter from Shelley to Hogg), 'that resistance was useless,
but that she would fly with me, and threw herself upon my protection.'
This was clearly a rather decided step upon the damsel's part: we may
form our own conclusions whether she was willing to unite with Percy
without the bond of marriage; or whether she confidently calculated upon
inducing him to marry her, her family being kept in the dark; or whether
the whole affair was a family manoeuvre for forcing on an engagement and
a wedding. Shelley returned to London, and had various colloquies with
Harriet: in due course he eloped with her to Edinburgh, and there on
28th August he married her. His age was then just nineteen, and hers
sixteen. Shelley, who was a profound believer in William Godwin's
_Political Justice_, rejected the institution of marriage as being
fundamentally irrational and wrongful. But he saw that he could not in
this instance apply his own pet theories without involving in discredit
and discomfort the woman whose love had been bestowed upon him. Either
his opinion or her happiness must be sacrificed to what he deemed a
prejudice of society: he decided rather to sacrifice the former.

For two years, or up to an advanced date in 1813, the married life of
Shelley and Harriet appears to have been a happy one, so far as their
mutual relation was concerned; though rambling and scrambling,
restricted by mediocrity of income (L400 a year, made up between the two
fathers), and pestered by the continual, and to Percy at last very
offensive, presence of Miss Wes