What _naïveté_! Byron's meaning is perfectly clear. Whatever she was, or may have been--whatever her virtues or her sins--she had never wronged Lady Byron. On the contrary, she had, at considerable risk to herself, interceded for her with her brother, when the crisis came into their married life. Byron's intercourse with his sister had never borne any connection with his relations towards his wife--it was a thing apart--and at the time of writing was closed perhaps for ever. He plainly repudiates Lady Byron's cruel suspicions of a criminal intercourse having taken place during the brief period of their married existence. He could not have spoken in plainer language without indelicacy, and yet, so persistent was Lady Byron in her evil opinion of both, these simple straightforward words were wholly misconstrued. Malignant casuistry could of course find a dark hint in the sentence, 'When one ceased, the other began'; but the mind must indeed be prurient that could place the worst construction upon the expression of so palpable a fact. It was not Lady Byron's intention to complain of things that had taken place _previous_ to her marriage; her contention had always been that she separated from her husband in consequence of his conduct while under her own roof. When, in 1869, all the documentary evidence upon which she relied was shown to Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, that great lawyer thus expressed his opinion of their value: 'Lady Byron had an ill-conditioned mind, preying upon itself, till morbid delusion was the result. If not, she was an accomplished hypocrite, regardless of truth, and to whose statements no credit whatever ought to be attached.' Lord Lovelace tells us that all the charges made against Lady Byron in 1869 (when the Beecher Stowe 'Revelations' were published) would have collapsed 'if all her papers had then been accessible and available'; and that Dr. Lushington, who was then alive, 'from the best and kindest motives, and long habit of silence,' exerted his influence over the other trustees to suppress them! Why, we may ask, was this? The answer suggests itself. It was because he well knew that there was nothing in those papers to fix guilt upon Mrs. Leigh. It must not be forgotten that Dr. Lushington, in 1816, expressed his deliberate opinion that the proofs were wholly insufficient to sustain a charge of incest. In this connection Lady Byron's written statement, dated March 14, 1816, is most valuable. 'The causes of this suspicion,' she writes, 'did not amount to proof ... and I considered that, whilst a possibility of innocence existed, every principle of duty and humanity forbade me to act as if Mrs. Leigh was actually guilty, more especially as any intimation of so heinous a crime, even if not distinctly proved, must have seriously affected Mrs. Leigh's character and happiness.'