of
England. Young, clever, and fashionable, but a little eccentric, she had
been married some years when she fell so desperately in love with Lord
Byron that she braved every thing for him. It was not Byron who made the
first advances, for his powers of seduction were only the attractions
with which nature had endowed him. His person, his voice, his look,--all
in him was irresistible. In presenting himself anywhere, he could very
well say with Shakspeare, in "Othello,"--

"This only is the witchcraft I have used."

Lord Byron, who was then only twenty-three years of age, and not
married, was flattered, and more than pleased, by this preference shown
to him. Although Lady C. L----'s beauty was not particularly attractive
to him, and although her character was exactly opposite to the ideal
which he had formed of what woman's character should be, yet she
contrived to interest him, to captivate him by the power of her love,
and in a very short time to persuade him that he loved her.

This sort of love could not last. It was destined to end in a
catastrophe. Lady L----'s jealousy was ridiculous. Dressed sometimes as
a page, sometimes in another costume, she was wont to follow him by
means of these disguises. She quarrelled and played the heroine, etc.
Byron, who disliked quarrels of all kinds (and perhaps even the lady
herself), besides being intimate with all her family, was too much the
sufferer by this conduct not to endeavor to bring her back to a sense of
reason and of her duty. He was indulging in the hope that he had
succeeded in these endeavors when, at a ball given by Lady Heathcote,
Lady L----, after vain efforts to attract Byron's attention, went up to
him and asked him whether she might waltz. Byron replied, half-absently,
that he saw no reason why she should not; upon which her pride and her
passion became so excited that she seized hold of a knife, and feigned
to commit suicide. The ball was at once at an end, and all London was
soon filled with accounts of this incident. Lady L---- had scarcely
recovered from the slight wound she had inflicted on herself, when she
wrote to a young peer, and made him all kinds of extravagant promises,
if he would consent to call out Byron and kill him. This, however, did
not prevent her calling again upon Lord Byron, not, however, says
Medwin, with the intention of blowing his brains out; as he was not at
home, she wrote on one of his books

"Remember me."

On ret