high-principled
woman, none have ever denied. The wonder was, not that she would not
live with such a man as Byron, but that she could ever have married him.
In charity we must decide that she was ignorant of the unspeakable
degradation of such an act. That he was a famous man of genius, the
most wonderfully gifted poet of his time, might have been a temptation,
but it was no excuse, if she entered into the contract with her eyes
open. But aside from the question of vice or virtue, there was nothing
in common between them. She felt that she had fallen from the
unalterable serenity and dignity of her existence, into chaos. Her
natural reserve and his natural frankness were the occasion of continual
clashings. Her formality and his bluntness caused constant unrest.
Accustomed to the regularity of a well-ordered English household, she
was miserable at the utter demoralization of their home,--of which the
bailiff had possession nine times during the short year they occupied
it. Formed for a calm, domestic life, she would probably have been a
most admirable wife to a man suited to her virtuous tastes, but her very
virtues irritated Byron.

Lady Caroline Lamb, who had loved him so madly, and on whom he had
expended a temporary passion, was in her ardent nature and erratic
genius much better suited to his tastes; and yet it had not taken him
long to tire of her, beautiful as she had been. And were ever such
bitter and cruel words addressed to a wronged woman, even though she had
herself been fearfully to blame in the matter, as those sent by Byron to
this poor creature, who had sent him a last touching appeal to remember
her? He wrote:--

"Remember you! remember you! Until the waters of Lethe have flowed
over the burning torrent of your existence, shame and remorse will
cry in your ears, and pursue you with the delirium of fever.
Remember you! Do not doubt it, I will remember. And your husband
will also remember you. Neither of us can ever forget you. To him
you have been an unfaithful wife, and to me--a devil!"

Terrible words, which apparently changed her love to hate, for she was
his relentless enemy for many years. But one day the great poet died, in
Greece, the death of a hero. His body was taken back to England for
burial, and Caroline Lamb stood at her window and saw the procession go
by. The coffin was followed by a dog, howling piteously. Caroline
uttered a heartrending cry, and sunk