“I certainly did not dream that she was attached to me, which it seems she has been for some time. I also thought her of a very cold disposition, in which I was also mistaken; it is a long story, and I won’t trouble you with it. As to her virtues, and so on, you will hear enough of them (for she is a kind of _pattern_ in the north) without my running into a display on the subject.” A little over two months after the date of this they were married, and he writes to Murray in the same week: “The marriage took place on the 2d inst., so pray make haste and congratulate away.” [And to Moore, a few days later.] “I was married this day week. The parson has pronounced it; Perry has announced it, and the _Morning Post_, also, under head of ‘Lord Byron’s marriage’--as if it were a fabrication and the puff direct of a new stay-maker.” A month and a half later, in another Moore letter, alluding to the death of the Duke of Dorset (an old friend of his), he says: “There was a time in my life when this event would have broken my heart; and all I can say for it now is--that it isn’t worth breaking.” Two more citations, and I shall have done with this extraordinary record. In March, 1815 (the marriage having occurred in January), he writes to Moore from the house of his father-in-law, Sir Ralph Milbanke--a little northward of the Tees, in County Durham: “I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntering, and playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read old _Annual Registers_ and the daily papers, and gathering shells on the shore, and watching the growth of stunted gooseberries in the garden, that I have neither time nor sense to say more than yours ever--B.” _A Stay in London._ On leaving the country for a new residence in London, his growing cheer and spirits are very manifest: “I have been very comfortable here. Bell is in health, and unvaried good humor. But we are all in the agonies of packing.… I suppose by this hour to-morrow I shall be stuck in the chariot with my chin upon a band-box. I have prepared, however, another carriage for the abigail, and all the trumpery which our wives drag along with them.”