a
soul! leaving the door open to calumny, and making it to be supposed
that her silence was magnanimity destined to cover over frightful
wrongs, perhaps even depravity. In vain did he, feeling his conscience
at ease, implore some inquiry and examination. She refused, and the only
favor she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to see
whether he were not mad. Happily Lord Byron only discovered at a later
period the purport of this strange visit.

In vain did Lord Byron's friend, the companion of all his travels, throw
himself at Lady Byron's feet, imploring her to give over this fatal
silence. The only reply she deigned was, that she had thought him mad!

And why, then, had she believed him mad? Because she, a methodical
inflexible woman, with that unbendingness which a profound moralist
calls the worship rendered to pride by a feelingless soul;--because she
could not understand the possibility of tastes and habits different to
those of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life! Not to be hungry
when she was--not to sleep at night, but to write while she was
sleeping, and to sleep when she was up--in short, to gratify the
requirements of material and intellectual life at hours different to
hers:--all that was not merely annoying for her, but it must be
_madness!_ or if not, it betokened depravity that she could neither
submit to nor tolerate without perilling her own morality!

Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which exposed Lord Byron
to the most malignant interpretations--to all the calumny and revenge of
his enemies.

She was perhaps the only woman in the world so strangely organized--the
only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling happy and proud at belonging
to a man superior to the rest of humanity! and fatally was it decreed
that this woman _alone_ of her species should be Lord Byron's wife!

Before closing this chapter it remains for us to examine if it be true,
as several of his biographers have pretended, that he wished to be
reunited to his wife. We must here declare that Lord Byron's intention,
in the last years of his life, was, on the contrary, not to see Lady
Byron again. This is what he wrote from Ravenna, to Moore, in June,
1820:--

"I have received a Parisian letter from W. W----, which I prefer
answering through you, as that worthy says he is an occasional visitor
of yours. In November last he wrote to me a well-meaning letter, stating
for some reasons of his own, hi