All these stories, of course, are exceedingly shocking, if true; but there are no means of ascertaining whether they are true. Nothing can be positively affirmed except that the beginnings were inauspicious, and must have seemed the more inauspicious to Lady Byron because of that fond belief of hers, that her rejection of Byron in 1812 had caused him two years' mental agony, now at last to be happily removed by her condescending tenderness. A vast amount of tact--a vast amount of give-and-take--would have been needed to make a success of a marriage concluded under that misapprehension; and Lord and Lady Byron were both of an age at which tact is, as a rule, a virtue only known by name. Of Byron's tact we have an example in the famous dialogue: "Do I interrupt you, Byron?"... "Damnably." Of Lady Byron's tact we shall discover an instance at the crisis of her married life. In the meantime we must note that they made up their first quarrel--which may very well have been less serious at the time than it appeared to be in retrospect--and, at any rate, kept up appearances sufficiently well to deceive their closest friends. From Halnaby they returned to Seaham, where nothing happened except that Byron discovered his father-in-law to be a bore, addicted to dreary political monologuising over wine and walnuts. They next visited Mrs. Leigh at Six Mile Bottom, and then they proceeded to 13 Piccadilly Terrace--that unluckily numbered house, hired from the Duchess of Devonshire, in which many catastrophes were to occur, and a distress was presently to be levied for non-payment of the rent. Mrs. Leigh, it will be observed, was pleasantly surprised to observe that the marriage seemed to be turning out well. She had the more reason to be surprised because she shared none of Lady Byron's illusions as to the part which she had played, for the past two years, in Byron's emotional and imaginative life. She was in her brother's confidence, and knew all about Lady Caroline Lamb, all about Lady Oxford, and--more particularly--all about Mary Chaworth. Consequently she had had her apprehensions, which she confided to Byron's friend Hodgson. A few extracts from her letters to Hodgson will bring this point out, and show us how the marriage looked from her point of view. On February 15, 1815, she wrote: "It appears to me that Lady Byron _sets about_ making him happy in quite the right way. It is true I judge at a distance, and we generally _hope_ as we _wish_; but I assure you I don't conclude hastily on this subject, and will own to you, what I would not scarcely to any other person, that I had _many fears_ and much anxiety _founded upon many causes and circumstances_ of which I cannot _write_. Thank God! that they do not appear likely to be realised."