'Nor need I write to tell the tale, My pen were doubly weak. Oh! what can idle words avail, Unless my heart could speak? 'By day or night, in weal or woe, That heart, no longer free, Must bear the love it cannot show, And silent turn for thee.' In 'Herod's Lament for Mariamne' we find: 'She's gone, who shared my diadem; She sunk, with her my joys entombing; I swept that flower from Judah's stem, Whose leaves for me alone were blooming; And mine's the guilt, and mine the Hell, This bosom's desolation dooming; And I have earned those tortures well, Which unconsumed are still consuming!' While admitting that Byron's avowed object was to portray the remorse of Herod, we suspect that the haunting image of one so dear to him--one who had suffered through guilt which he so frequently deplored in verse--must have been in the poet's mind when these lines were written. On January 17, 1814, Byron went to Newstead with Augusta Leigh, and stayed there one month. 'A busy month and pleasant, at least three weeks of it.... "The Corsair" has been conceived, written, published, etc., since I took up this journal. They tell me it has great success; it was written _con amore_, and much from _existence_.' On the following day Byron wrote to his friend Wedderburn Webster: 'I am on my way to the country on rather a melancholy expedition. A very old and early connexion [Mary Chaworth], or rather friend of mine, has desired to see me; and, as now we can never be more than friends, I have no objection. She is certainly unhappy and, I fear, ill; and the length and circumstances attending our acquaintance render her request and my visit neither singular nor improper.' This strange apology for what might have been considered a very natural act of neighbourly friendship, inevitably reminds us of a French proverb, _Qui s'excuse s'accuse_. It is worthy of note that, after Byron had been ten days at Newstead with his sister, he wrote to his lawyer--who must have been surprised at the irrelevant information--to say that Augusta Leigh was 'in the family way.' The significance of this communication has hitherto passed unnoticed. We gather from Byron's letters that he was much depressed by Mary Chaworth's state of health, involving all the risks of discovery. 'My rhyming propensity is quite gone,' he writes, 'and I feel much as I did at Patras on recovering from my fever--weak, but in health, and only afraid of a relapse.' Soon after his return to London Byron wrote to Moore: 'Seriously, I am in what the learned call a dilemma, and the vulgar, a scrape....'