'With regard to your pecuniary interests ... I am aware that the interests of your children may _rightly_ influence your conduct when guilt is not incurred by consulting them. However, your children cannot, I trust, under any circumstances, be left destitute, for reasons which I will hereafter communicate.' There was at this time a strong probability of Byron's return to England. Lady Byron tried to extract from Augusta a promise that she would not see him. Augusta fenced with the question, until, when driven into a corner, she was compelled to admit that it would be unnatural to close the door against her brother. Lady Byron was furious: 'I do not consider you bound to me in any way,' she writes. 'I told you what I knew, because I thought that measure would enable me to befriend you--and chiefly by representing the objections to a renewal of personal communication between you and him.... We must, _according to your present intentions_, act independently of each other. On my part it will still be with every possible consideration for you and your children, and should I, by your reception of him, be obliged to relinquish my intercourse with you, I will do so in such manner as shall be least prejudicial to your interests. I shall most earnestly wish that the results of your conduct may tend to establish your peace, instead of aggravating your remorse. But, entertaining these views of your duty and my own, could I in honesty, or in friendship, suppress them?' It might have been supposed that Lady Byron, in 1816, after Augusta's so-called 'confession,' would have kept her secret inviolate. That had been a condition precedent; without it Augusta would not have ventured to deceive even Lady Byron. It appears from the following note, written by Lady Byron to Mrs. Villiers, that Augusta's secret had been confided to the tender mercies of that lady. On January 26, 1820, Lady Byron writes: 'I am reluctant to give you _my_ impression of what has passed between Augusta and me, respecting her conduct in case of his return; but I should like to know whether your unbiassed opinion, _formed from the statement of facts_, coincided with it.' Verily, Augusta had been playing with fire! CHAPTER V On December 31, 1819, Byron wrote a letter to his wife. The following is an extract: