better.  The would-be Juliet beset the poet with renewed advances, on one occasion penetrating to his rooms in the disguise of a page, on another threatening to stab herself with a pair of scissors, and again, developing into a Medea, offering her gratitude to any one who would kill him.  “The ‘Agnus’ is furious,” he writes to Hodgson, in February, 1813, in one of the somewhat ungenerous bursts to which he was too easily provoked.  “You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things she has said and done since (really from the best motives) I withdrew my homage....  The business of last summer I broke off, and now the amusement of the gentle fair is writing letters literally threatening my life.”  With one member of the family, Lady Melbourne, Mr. Lamb’s mother, and sister of Sir Ralph Milbanke, he remained throughout on terms of pleasant intimacy.  He appreciated the talent and sense, and was ready to profit by the experience and tact of “the cleverest of women.”  But her well-meant advice had unfortunate results, for it was on her suggestion that he became a suitor for the hand of her niece, Miss Milbanke.  Byron first proposed to this lady in 1813; his offer was refused, but so graciously that they continued to correspond on friendly, which gradually grew into intimate terms, and his second offer, towards the close of the following year, was accepted.

    [Footnote 1:  Mr. Trelawny says that Thyrza was a cousin, but that on
    this subject Byron was always reticent.  Mr. Minto, as we have seen,
    associates her with the disguised girl of 1807-8.]

After a series of vain protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew statistics, but was “not for Conrad, no, no, no!” Lady Caroline lapsed into an attitude of fixed hostility; and shortly after the crash came, and her predictions were realized, vented her wrath in the now almost forgotten novel of Glenarvon, in which some of Byron’s real features were represented in conjunction with many fantastic additions.  Madame de Stael was kind enough to bring a copy of the book before his notice when they met on the Lake of Geneva, but he seems to have been less moved by it than by most attacks.  We must however, bear in mind his own admission in a parallel case.  “I say I am perfectly calm; I am, nevertheless, in a fury.”  Over the sad vista of the remaining years of the unhappy lady’s life we need not linger.  During a considerable part of it she appears hovering about the thin line that separates some kinds of wit and passion from madness; writing more novels, burning her hero’s effigy and letters, and then clamouring for a lock of his hair, or a sight of his portrait; separated from, and again reconciled to, a husband to whose magnanimous forbearance and compassion she bears testimony to the last, comparing herself to Jane Shore; attempting Byronic verses, loudly denouncing and yet never ceasing inwardly to idolize, the man