It became known by that statement, after some years, that, when Lady Noel went to London, to see what could and ought to be done, she obtained good legal opinions on the case, so far as she knew it.  Those opinions declared Lady Byron fully justified in refusing to rejoin her husband.  The parents, however, never knew the whole; and it was on yet more substantial grounds that Lady Byron formed her resolution.  The facts were submitted, as the world has since known, as an A.B. case, to Dr. Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly; and those able lawyers and good men peremptorily decided, that the wife, whoever she might be, must never see her husband again.  When they learned whose case it was, they not only gave their full sanction to her refusal to return, but declared that they would never countenance in any way a change in that resolution.  Dr. Lushington’s statement to this effect appears in the Appendix to Moore’s “Life,” as a part of Lady Byron’s vindication of her parents.

It was very hard on her to be compelled to speak at all.  For six years she had kept silence utterly, bearing all imputations without reply.  But when it was brought to her notice that her parents were charged with the gravest offences by her husband’s biographer, after the death of both, and when no other near relative was in existence, she had no choice.  She must exonerate them.  The testimony was, as she said, “extorted” from her.  The respect which had been felt for her during the first years of silence was not impaired by this disclosure; but it was by one which occurred a few years later.  A statement on her domestic affairs was published, in her name, in a magazine of large circulation.[A] It did not really explain anything, while it seemed to break through a dignified reserve which had won a high degree of general esteem.  It was believed that feminine weakness had prevailed at last; and her reputation suffered accordingly with many who had till then regarded her with favor and even reverence.

[Footnote A:  New Monthly Magazine, 1836.]

This was the climax of the hardship of her case.  She had no concern whatever with this act of publication.  It was one of poor Campbell’s disastrous pranks.  He could not conceive how he could have done such a thing, and was desperately sorry; but there was little good in that.  The mischief was done which could never be thoroughly repaired.  She once more suffered in silence; for she was not weak enough to complain of irremediable evils.  Nine years afterwards she wrote to a friend, who had been no less unjustifiably betrayed,—­“I am grieved for you, as regards the actual position; but it will come right.  I was myself made to appear responsible for a publication by Campbell, most unfairly, some years ago; so that, if I had not imagination enough to enter into your case, experience would have taught me to do so.”

Those who are old enough to remember the year 1816 will easily recall the fluctuations of opinion which took place as to the merits of the husband and the wife, whose separation was as interesting to ten thousand households as any family event of their own.  Then, and for a few years after, was Lady Byron the world’s talk,—­innocently, most reluctantly, and unavoidably.