This cryptic utterance implies that Mrs. Leigh's respectability was injurious to Lady Byron. Why? 'If Augusta had fled to Byron in exile, and was seen with him as _et soror et conjux_, the victory remained with Lady Byron, solid and final. _This was the solution hoped for by Lady Byron's friends_, Lushington and Doyle, as well as Lady Noel.' So the cat is out of the bag at last! It having been impossible for Lady Byron to bring any proof against Byron and his sister which would have held water in a law-court, her friends and her legal adviser hoped that Augusta would desert her husband and children, and thus furnish them with evidence which would justify their conduct before the world. But Augusta was sorry not to be able to oblige them. This was a pity, because, according to Lord Lovelace, who was the most ingenuous of men: 'Their triumph and Lady Byron's justification would have been complete, and great would have been their rejoicing.' Well, they made up for it afterwards, when Byron and Augusta were dead; after those memoirs had been destroyed which, in Byron's words, 'will be a kind of guide-post in case of death, and prevent some of the lies which would otherwise be told, and destroy some which have been told already.' In allusion to the meetings between Lady Byron and Augusta immediately after the separation, we are told in 'Astarte' that 'on all these occasions, one subject--uppermost in the thoughts of both--had been virtually ignored, except that Augusta _had had the audacity_ to name the reports about herself with all the pride of innocence. _Intercourse could not continue on that footing_, for Augusta probably aimed at a positive guarantee of her innocence, and at committing Lady Byron irretrievably to that.' This was great presumption on Mrs. Leigh's part, after all the pains they had taken to make her uncomfortable. Lady Byron, we are told by Lord Lovelace, could no longer bear the false position, and 'before leaving London she went to the Hon. Mrs. Villiers--a most intimate friend of Augusta's'--and deliberately poisoned her mind. That which she told Mrs. Villiers is not stated; but we infer that Lady Byron retailed some of the gossip that had reached her through one of Mrs. Leigh's servants who had overheard part of a conversation between Augusta and Byron shortly after Medora's birth. After the child had been taken to St. James's Palace, Byron often went there. It is likely that Augusta had been overheard jesting with Byron about his child. We cannot be sure of this; but, at any rate, some such expression, if whispered in Lady Byron's ears, would be sufficient to confirm her erroneous belief.