Or, at all events, it seemed open to him to make this choice, though the actual course of his life in the presence of the apparent choice, might well be cited as an object lesson in the distinction which the philosophers have drawn between the freedom to do as we will, and the freedom to will as we will. Which is to say that the spectacular life, in his case as in so many others, was to be at the mercy of the inner life, and the things seen in it were largely to be the effect of causes which were out of sight. It is to that inner life, and to those invisible causes of visible effects that we must now turn back. CHAPTER X THE SECRET ORCHARD The invisible force which was beginning to influence Byron's life, and was presently to deflect it, was a revival of his recollections of Mary Chaworth. He nowhere tells us so, nor do his biographers on his behalf, but the fact is none the less quite certain. The proofs abound, though the name is never mentioned in them; and Mr. Richard Edgecumbe has marshalled them[6] with conclusive force. The course which Byron's life followed--the things which he willed and did, as well as the things he said--can only be explained if Mary Chaworth is once more brought into the story. She is, it must be admitted, one of the most shadowy and elusive of all heroines of romance. We have hardly a scrap of her handwriting--hardly a definite report about her from any contemporary witness. She is said to have been disposed to flirt before her marriage, but to have been serious and well-conducted afterwards. It is known that her husband was unkind to her and that she was unhappy with him; there are statements that she was "religious"; but most of the other evidence is negative, leaving the impression that she was commonplace. The secret of her charm, that is to say, is lost; and we can only guess at it--each of us guessing differently because something of ourselves has to go to the framing of the guesses.