He had, in fact, made, and was still to make, attempts, through several channels, to pin Lady Byron and her supporters to a specific allegation. Hodgson had been appealed to by Mrs. Leigh to come and help. He came, and, on the strength of the information supplied to him, wrote to Lady Byron. Two of her letters and one of his are published in his life by his son, the Reverend James T. Hodgson. Hers may be analysed as a very thinly veiled threat to bring mysterious and abominable charges unless she got her way. There is an air about the letters of conscious virtue and of consideration for the feelings of others, but the threat is unmistakably contained in them. "He _does_ know--too well--what he affects to inquire," is one sentence; and another is: "The circumstances, which are of too convincing a nature, shall not be generally known whilst Lord B. allows me to spare him." Hanson, the lawyer had, in the meantime, been sent to call on Sir Ralph Noel. He had asked for explanations, and been refused any. He had also met Lushington who had, by this time, been definitely retained by Lady Byron, and addressed some inquiries to him. "Oh, we are not going to let you into the _forte_ of our case," had been Dr. Lushington's reply. It was, no doubt, a reply in strict conformity with his instructions. Lushington, as we know from a published letter from him to Lady Byron, was, at this date, personally in favour of an attempt at reconciliation. On the other hand, as is equally clear from the letters quoted in preceding paragraphs, Lady Byron had announced her intention of going into Court unless she could get her separation without doing so. Whether she had, at this date, any case--any case, that is to say, which a lawyer could take into Court with any confidence of winning it--may be questioned. The weaker her case, of course, the less likely her counsel would be to reveal the nakedness of the land prematurely by talking about it. Professional etiquette and zeal for the interests intrusted to him account quite adequately for his reticence; and there is no other influence to be drawn from it. A little later, at an uncertain date towards the end of February, Lushington, as his letter to Lady Byron sets forth, received a visit from Lady Byron, had "additional information" imparted to him, changed his mind, and said that, if a reconciliation were still contemplated, or should thereafter be proposed, he, at any rate, should decline to render any help in bringing it about. The original "Byron mystery" was: What was the nature of that "additional information" which so suddenly altered Lushington's attitude towards the case? That mystery has, as we shall see in a moment, been solved by Lord Lovelace. The questions left unsolved relate, not to the nature of the information but to its accuracy. Byron, Hobhouse, and Hodgson, however, were unable to dispute its accuracy because they were left uninformed as to its nature, and could only guess the charges to be met.