Even the period of the engagement is reported not to have been of unclouded happiness. A son of Sir Ralph Milbanke's Steward at Seaham has furnished recollections to that effect. "While Byron was at Seaham," says this witness, "he spent most of his time pistol-shooting in the plantation"--a strangely moody occupation for an affianced man; and he adds that, on the wedding morning, when all was prepared for the ceremony, "Byron had to be sought for in the grounds where he was walking in his usual surly mood." Mrs. Beecher Stowe tells us that Miss Milbanke, observing that her lover did not rejoice sufficiently in his good fortune, offered to release him from his promise--whereupon he "fainted entirely away," and so convinced her, for the moment, of the sincerity of his affection. Similar stories, equally well attested and equally unconvincing, cluster round the departure of the married couple for Halnaby where they spent their honeymoon. Lady Byron told Lady Anne Barnard that the carriage had no sooner driven away from the door of the mansion than her husband turned upon her with "a malignant sneer" and derided her for cherishing the "wild hope" of "reforming him," saying: "Many are the tears you will have to shed ere that plan is accomplished. It is enough for me that you are my wife for me to hate you." The Steward's son, giving an alternative version of the story, declares that "insulting words" were spoken before leaving the park--"after which he appeared to sit in moody silence, reading a book for the rest of the journey." Byron's own account of the incident, as given to Medwin, was as follows: "I was surprised at the arrangements for the journey, and somewhat out of humour to find a lady's maid stuck between me and my bride. It was rather too early to assume the husband; so I was forced to submit, but it was not with a very good grace. Put yourself in a similar situation, and tell me if I had not some reason to be in the sulks." These three stories, it is clear, cannot all be true; and none of them can either be proved or disproved, though the last was contradicted by Hobhouse who said that he had inspected the carriage and found no maid in it. Similarly with the stories which follow. According to the Steward's son, Sir Ralph Milbanke's tenants assembled to cheer Byron on his arrival at Halnaby--but "of these he took not the slightest notice, but jumped out of the carriage and walked away, leaving his bride to alight by herself." There is also a story told by another authority, who cannot, however, have been an eye-witness, to the effect that Byron, awaking from his slumbers on his nuptial night, exclaimed, in his surprise at his strange surroundings, that he supposed he was in Hell.