in love
with her. He had explicitly declared this only a short time before. Yet
here was a pretty girl about to suffer the "horrible persecution" of
being sent to school, and finding no alternative save to "throw herself
on his protection"--in other words, to let him treat her as he would,
and to become his mistress.

The absurdity of the situation makes one smile. Common sense should have
led some one to box Harriet's ears and send her off to school without a
moment's hesitation; while as for Shelley, he should have been told how
ludicrous was the whole affair. But he was only nineteen, and she was
only sixteen, and the crisis seemed portentous. Nothing could be more
flattering to a young man's vanity than to have this girl cast herself
upon him for protection. It did not really matter that he had not
loved her hitherto, and that he was already half engaged to another
Harriet--his cousin, Miss Grove. He could not stop and reason with
himself. He must like a true knight rescue lovely girlhood from the
horrors of a school!

It is not unlikely that this whole affair was partly managed or
manipulated by the girl's father. Jew Westbrook knew that Shelley was
related to rich and titled people, and that he was certain, if he lived,
to become Sir Percy, and to be the heir of his grandfather's estates.
Hence it may be that Harriet's queer conduct was not wholly of her own
prompting.

In any case, however, it proved to be successful. Shelley's ardent and
impulsive nature could not bear to see a girl in tears and appealing
for his help. Hence, though in his heart she was very little to him, his
romantic nature gave up for her sake the affection that he had felt for
his cousin, his own disbelief in marriage, and finally the common sense
which ought to have told him not to marry any one on two hundred pounds
a year.

So the pair set off for Edinburgh by stagecoach. It was a weary and most
uncomfortable journey. When they reached the Scottish capital, they
were married by the Scottish law. Their money was all gone; but their
landlord, with a jovial sympathy for romance, let them have a room, and
treated them to a rather promiscuous wedding-banquet, in which every one
in the house participated.

Such is the story of Shelley's marriage, contracted at nineteen with a
girl of sixteen who most certainly lured him on against his own better
judgment and in the absence of any actual love.

The girl whom he had taken to himself was