When Moore saw him in London, he was in a troubled state of mind about his affairs.  His embarrassments were so pressing that he meditated breaking off the match; but it was within a month of the wedding-day, and he said he had gone too far to retract.—­How it was that Sir Ralph Milbanke did not make it his business to ascertain all the conditions of a union with a man of Byron’s reputation it is difficult to imagine.  Every movement of the idolized poet was watched, anecdotes of his life and ways were in all mouths; and a prudent father, if encouraging his addresses at all, should naturally have ascertained the chances of his daughter having an honorable and happy home.  Sir Ralph probably thought so, when there were ten executions in the house in the first few months after the marriage.  Those difficulties, however, did not affect the happiness of the marriage unfavorably.  The wife was not the less of the heroic temperament for being “a pattern young lady.”  She was one whose spirit was sure to rise under pressure, and who was always most cheerful when trouble called forth her energies on behalf of others.  Liberal with her own property, making light of privation, full of clear and practical resource in emergency, she won her husband’s admiration in the midst of the difficulties into which he had plunged her.  For a time he was not ashamed of that admiration; and his avowals of it are happily on record.

They were married on the second of January.  The wedding-day was miserable.  Byron awoke in one of his melancholy moods, and wandered alone in the grounds till called to be married.  His wayward mind was full of all the associations that were least congenial with the day.  His thoughts were full of Mary Chaworth, and of old scenes in his life, which he fancied he loved because he was now leaving them behind.  He declared that his poem of “The Dream” was a true picture of his wedding-morning; and there are circumstances, not told in his “Life,” which render this probable.  After the ceremony and breakfast, the young couple left Seaham for Sir Ralph’s seat at Halnaby.  Towards dusk of that winter-day, the carriage drove up to the door, where the old butler stood ready to receive his young lady and her bridegroom.  The moment the carriage-door was opened, the bridegroom jumped out and walked away.  When his bride alighted, the old servant was aghast.  She came up the steps with the listless gait of despair.  Her face and movements expressed such utter horror and desolation, that the old butler longed to offer his arm to the lonely young creature, as an assurance of sympathy and protection.  Various stories got abroad as to the cause of this horror, one probably as false as another; and, for his own part, Byron met them by a false story of Miss Milbanke’s lady’s-maid having been stuck in, bodkin-wise, between them.  As Lady Byron certainly soon got over the shock, the probability is that she satisfied herself that he had been suffering under one of the dark moods to which he was subject, both constitutionally and as the poet of moods.