"The poor lady had never had a comfortable meal since their marriage. Her husband had no fixed hour for breakfast, and was always too late for dinner. "At his express desire she had invited two elderly ladies to meet them in her opera-box. Nothing could be more courteous than his manner to them while they remained; but no sooner had they gone than he began to annoy his wife by venting his ill-humour, in a strain of bitterest satire, against the dress and manners of her friends." "Poor Lady Byron was afraid of her life. Her husband slept with loaded pistols by his bed-side, and a dagger under his pillow." "Nonsensical" is decidedly the word for these allegations. The incidents, even if true, could only be symptoms, not causes, of the disagreement. Harness, perceiving that, seeks the true explanation of the estrangement in the disposition of Lady Byron, whom he had known as a girl. She "gave one the idea of being self-willed and self-opinionated." She "carried no cheerfulness along with her." The majority of her acquaintances "looked upon her as a reserved and frigid sort of being whom one would rather cross the room to avoid than be brought into conversation with unnecessarily." A common acquaintance remarked to Harness: "If Lady Byron has a heart, it is deeper seated and harder to get at than anybody else's heart whom I have ever known." Et cetera. So far as we can judge Lady Byron by the letters in which she subsequently announced, without formulating, her grievances, the verdict seems a just one. She might be pictured, in the words of the author of "Ionica" as one who "_Smiles at all that's coarse and rash, Yet wins the trophies of the fight, Unscathed in honour's wreck and crash, Heartless, yet always in the right._" Or rather one begins so to picture her--and is even justified in so picturing her at the beginning--though presently, when one sees how unfairly she fought in the great fight which ensued, one changes one's mind about her, withdraws such sympathy as one has allowed to go out to her, and thinks of her husband when one comes to the final couplet of the poem: "_And I, dear passionate Teucer, dare Go through the homeless world with you._" Yet Lady Byron had her grievances, and though they were quite different from those which Harness has reported, they were not light ones. Two grievances in particular must have been very trying to the temper of a young bride who had been an only and spoiled child. In the first place, and almost at once, there was trouble about money. In the second place, and very soon, there was trouble about "the women of the theatre."