All this time the relations between husband and wife were becoming more and more strained. Everything appears to have been perfectly amicable between them until 1792, when, in a letter to Thomas Pelham, Lady Webster mentions that his behaviour to her seems to have undergone a sudden change, owing, she thought, to money difficulties which were troubling him. It is impossible to say what was the true explanation of the reasons for this change. Her various friends were certainly a trial to Sir Godfrey’s jealous disposition, but beyond a foolish levity of conduct consequent upon youth, her flirtations do not seem to have been of a very dangerous nature. Their correspondence, however, continued without break until her return to England in June 1796. Disparity in ages and a complete absence of any similarity of interests was in all probability the base from which the rift first sprang; and, once the edges were parted asunder, an infinity of foolish misunderstandings and trivial annoyances would too surely have assisted the widening of the gulf. Faults there were, and material faults too, on both sides. Sir Godfrey’s indifference to her tastes, his gloomy and at times sullen disposition, his violence of temper, his fits of depression which were the ultimate cause of his unhappy end, and his love of gambling and dissipation, cannot have nurtured, and, in fact, speedily blasted a youthful affection which might have flourished in a more congenial soil. He can never have properly fathomed the character and temperament of the girl to whom he was united. Had he married a nonentity, who was ready to sit at home and trace out a colourless existence, obedient to his beck and call, all might have been well. But his wife was not one of these. She was essentially a woman of action. Her ambitions could not be confined to any particular groove, and her spirit would not allow her to stoop to a position of dependence. Her increasing knowledge of the world and its ways taught her to believe herself a victim to her fortune, and, regarding her husband as the cause, her respect for him became diminished and the recollection of the kindly side of his nature was swallowed up in her grievances. Thus it is that her references to him in her Journal are tinged with even more than a feeling of dislike. Throughout her life she was accustomed to speak out her thoughts with an almost brutal frankness, and her allusions to Sir Godfrey in these pages are sometimes inclined to be hysterical and perhaps more severe than circumstances always merited.