s belief that a _reunion_ might be
effected between Lady Byron and myself.

"To this I answered as usual; and he sent me a second letter, repeating
his notions, which letter I have never answered, having had a thousand
other things to think of. He now writes as if he believed that he had
offended me by touching on the topic; and I wish you to assure him that
I am not at all so, but on the contrary, obliged by his good-nature. At
the same time _acquaint him the thing is impossible. You know this as
well as I, and there let it end._"

A year later, at Pisa, he again said to M----"_that he never would have
been reunited_ to Lady Byron; that the time for such a possibility was
passed, and he had made _quite sufficient advances_."

Let us add likewise that during the last period of his stay at Genoa, a
person whose acquaintance he had just made, thought fitting, for several
reasons and even by way of winning golden opinions among a certain set
in England, to insist on this matter with Lord Byron.

In order to succeed, this person represented Lady Byron as a victim,
telling him she was very ill physically and morally, and declaring the
secret cause to be, no doubt, grief at her separation from him and dread
of his asserting his rights over Ada.

Lord Byron, kind and impressionable as he was, may have been moved at
this; but assuredly his resolution of not being reunited to Lady Byron
was not shaken. His only reply was to show me a letter he had written
some little time before:--

"The letter I inclose," said he, "may help to explain my sentiments....
I was perfectly sincere when I wrote it, and am so still. But it is
difficult for me to withstand the thousand provocations on that subject,
which both friends and foes have for seven years been throwing in the
way of a man whose feelings were once quick, and whose temper was never
patient. But 'returning were as tedious as go o'er.' I feel this as much
as ever Macbeth did; and it is a dreary sensation, which at least
avenges the real or imaginary wrongs of one of the two unfortunate
persons whom it concerns."

Here is the letter he wrote from Pisa to Lady Byron:--

"I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's hair, which is very soft and
pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine was at twelve years old, if I
may judge from what I recollect of some in Augusta's possession, taken
at that age. But it don't curl, perhaps from its being let grow.

"I also thank you for the