Her father, as a Yorkshire baronet, spent his money freely.  A good deal of it went in election-expenses, and the hospitality of the house was great.  It was too orderly and sober and old-fashioned for Lord Byron’s taste, and he quizzed it accordingly; but he admitted the kindliness of it, and the amiability which made guests glad to go there and sorry to come away.  His special records of Miss Milbanke’s good-humor, spirit, and pleasantness indicate the source of subsequent misrepresentations of her.  Till he saw it, he could not conceive that order and dutifulness could coexist with liveliness and great charms of mind and manners; and when the fact was out of sight, he went back to his old notion, that affectionate parents and dutiful daughters must be dull, prudish, and tiresome.

“Bell” was beloved as only daughters are, but so unspoiled as to be sought in marriage as eagerly as if she had been a merry member of a merry tribe.  Lord Byron himself offered early, and was refused, like many other suitors.  Her feelings were not the same, however, to him as to others.  It is no wonder that a girl not out of her teens should be captivated by the young poet whom the world was beginning to worship for his genius as very few men are worshipped in their prime, and who could captivate young and old, man, woman, and child, when he chose to try.  As yet, his habits of life and mind had not told upon his manners, conversation, and countenance as they did afterwards.  The beauty of his face, the reserved and hesitating grace of his manner, and the pith and strength of such conversation as he was tempted into might well win the heart of a girl who was certainly far more fond of poetry than of mathematics.  Yet she refused him.  Perhaps she did not know him enough.  Perhaps she did not know her own feelings at the moment.  She afterwards found that she had always loved him.  His renewed offers at the close of two years made her very happy.  She was drawing near the end of her portion of life’s happiness; and she seems to have had no suspicion of the baselessness of her natural and innocent bliss.  It is probable that nobody about her knew, any more than herself, how and why Lord Byron offered to her a second time, till Moore published the facts in his “Life” of the poet.  The thrill of disgust which ran through every good heart, on reading the story, made all sympathizers ask how she could bear to learn how she had been treated in the confidences of profligates.  Perhaps she had known it long before, as her husband had repeatedly tried his powers of terrifying and depressing her; but, at all events, she could bear anything,—­not only with courage and in silence, but with calmness and inexhaustible mercy.  According to Moore’s account, a friend of Byron’s urged him to marry, as a remedy for the melancholy restlessness and disorder of his life; “and, after much discussion, he consented.”  The next proceedings were in character with this “consent.”