e
there and attracted attention by the liveliness of his manners. In the
following year Mrs. Byron again settled at Nottingham, and in the course
of a second and longer visit to her he frequently passed the night at the
Abbey, of which Lord Grey de Ruthyn was then a temporary tenant. This was
the occasion of his renewing his acquaintance with the Chaworths, who
invited him to their seat at Annesley. He used at first to return every
evening to Newstead, giving the excuse that the family pictures would come
down and take revenge on him for his grand-uncle's deed, a fancy repeated
in the _Siege of Corinth_. Latterly he consented to stay at Annesley,
which thus became his headquarters during the remainder of the holidays of
1803. The rest of the six weeks were mainly consumed in an excursion to
Matlock and Castleton, in the same companionship. This short period, with
the exception of prologue and epilogue, embraced the whole story of his
first real love. Byron was on this occasion in earnest; he wished to marry
Miss Chaworth, an event which, he says, would have "joined broad lands,
healed an old feud, and satisfied at least one heart."

The intensity of his passion is suggestively brought before us in an
account of his crossing the Styx of the Peak cavern, alone with the lady
and the Charon of the boat. In the same passage he informs us that he had
never told his love; but that she had discovered--it is obvious that she
never returned--it. We have another vivid picture of his irritation when
she was waltzing in his presence at Matlock; then an account of their
riding together in the country on their return to the family residence;
again, of his bending over the piano as she was playing the Welsh air of
"Mary Anne;" and lastly, of his overhearing her heartless speech to her
maid, which first opened his eyes to the real state of affairs--"Do you
think I could care for that lame boy?"--upon which he rushed out of the
house, and ran, like a hunted creature, to Newstead. Thence he shortly
returned from the rougher school of life to his haunts and tasks at
Harrow. A year later the pair again met to take farewell, on the hill of
Annesley--an incident he has commemorated in two short stanzas, that have
the sound of a wind moaning over a moor. "I suppose," he said, "the next
time I see you, you will be Mrs. Chaworth?" "I hope so," she replied (her
betrothed, Mr. Musters, had agreed to assume her family name). The
announcement of her