"With some difficulty, and many internal struggles, I reconciled the lady with her lord," is the language in which Byron relates the upshot of the negotiations. "I think," he continues, "of setting out for England by the Tyrol in a few days"; but only six days later he has changed his plans. "Pray," he then writes to Murray, "let my sister be informed that I am not coming as I intended: I have not the courage to tell her so myself, at least not yet; but I will soon, _with the reasons_." And about the reasons there is, of course, no mystery. Count Guiccioli, having gained the day, had carried his wife off to Ravenna, and Byron had missed her more than he had expected. Hoppner writes of him as "very much out of spirits, owing to Madame Guiccioli's departure, and out of humour with everybody and everything around him." He had had his belongings packed for his return to England, and had even dressed for the journey, but had changed his mind, and unpacked and undressed again at the last minute; and Madame Guiccioli, in the meantime, had had her third diplomatic indisposition, and threatened yet again to die unless Byron were brought to her. So that presently, on January 2, 1820, we find Byron back again at Ravenna, and giving Moore a curious explanation of his movements: "After her arrival at Ravenna the Guiccioli fell ill again too; and at last her father (who had, all along, opposed the _liaison_ most violently till now) wrote to me to say that she was in such a state that _he_ begged me to come and see her--and that her husband had acquiesced, in consequence of her relapse, and that _he_ (her father) would guarantee all this, and that there would be no further scenes in consequence between them, and that I should not be compromised in any way. I set out soon after and have been here ever since. I found her a good deal altered, but getting better." At first he seems to have supposed that he was merely a visitor like another; and a letter to Hoppner, dated January 20, shows him uncertain as to the duration of his stay: "I may stay a day, a week, a year, all my life; but all this depends upon what I can neither see nor foresee. I came because I was called, and will go the moment that I perceive what may render my departure proper. My attachment has neither the blindness of the beginning, nor the microscopic accuracy of the close to such _liaisons_; but 'time and the hour' must decide upon what I do."