"_A change came o'er the spirit of my dream. The Wanderer was returned--I saw him stand Before an Altar--with a gentle bride; Her face was fair, but was not that which made The Starlight of his boyhood:--as he stood Even at the altar, o'er his brow there came The self-same aspect, and the quivering shock That in the antique Oratory shook His bosom in its solitude: and then-- As in that hour--a moment o'er his face The tablet of unutterable thoughts Was traced,--and then it faded as it came, And he stood calm and quiet, and he spoke The fitting vows, but heard not his own words, And all things reeled around him; he could see Not that which was, nor that which should have been-- But the old mansion and the accustomed hall, And the remembered chambers, and the place, The day, the hour, the sunshine, and the shade, All things pertaining to that place and hour And her who was his destiny, came back And thrust themselves between him and the light._" That was his Parthian shaft; and Cordy Jeaffreson's view of "The Dream" as "a lovely and elaborate falsehood, written to persuade all mankind that he never loved the woman whose heart he was yearning to recover" is much too preposterous to be admitted. Mary Chaworth's husband knew that it was no figment. He recognised the reference to a certain "peculiar diadem of trees" on his estate, and gave orders that those trees should be cut down. Lady Byron had no such remedy open to her; but she knew what was meant and wrapped herself up in her virtue; while Byron, on his part, turned to the diversions which were to help him to live in the face of the world's contumely. Alike for him and for Shelley and the two ladies who attended him there was a good deal of that contumely as long as they remained in the Hotel d'Angleterre; and it may almost be said that they invited it by making themselves conspicuous. In Shelley's relations with Miss Godwin and Miss Clairmont there was at least the appearance of promiscuity--an appearance on which it did not take gossip long to base positive asseveration.[11] Byron, already an object of curiosity on account of his supposed misdeeds, had made himself conspicuous by his coach, and his retinue, and his manner of travelling _en seigneur_. So that the other boarders stared when he arrived, and stared still more when they saw him fraternising with his brother poet and the ladies, not only wondering what the eccentric party would be up to next, but keeping close watch on their comings and goings, following them to the lake-side when they went out boating, awaiting them on the lake-side when they landed on their return, lining up to inspect them as often as carriages were brought to the door to take them for a drive.