So he humoured her, remembering how she had railed at the bishop on her wedding day, knowing, no doubt, how little a thing might upset her mental balance, and making every possible allowance; and the only attempt at intervention came from Lady Melbourne, who remonstrated, not with Lady Caroline, but with Byron. He struck an attitude, and waived the matter on one side. "You need not fear me," was his reply. "I do not pursue pleasure like other men; I labour under an incurable disease and a blighted heart. Believe me she is safe with me." No one knows whether she was, in the narrow sense of the word, "safe" with him or not. Rogers thought that she was, but admitted that he did not really know. In any case she was not safe from herself, or from the tongue of scandal. She was really in love--her devotion was no passing fancy--and she did not care who knew it. Indeed she behaved as if she thought that the more people who knew it, the better. The woman who, at a ball, called upon Byron's friend Harness--that very serious young Cantab just about to take orders--to bear witness that she was wearing no fewer than six pairs of stockings, was not likely to hide the light of a grand passion under a bushel. She did not so hide it, but proceeded, as has been said, to _afficher_ herself as if she were inviting the attention of the world to a great spectacular entertainment. She had not known Byron a couple of months before people were beginning to talk. "Your little friend Caro William," wrote the Duchess of Devonshire on May 4, 1812, "as usual is doing all sorts of imprudent things with him.... The ladies, I hear spoil him, and the gentlemen are jealous of him. He is going back to Naxos, and then the husbands may sleep in peace. I should not be surprised if Caro William were to go with him, she is so wild and imprudent." Rogers, in his "Table Talk," is still more picturesque. He tells us how, when Byron and Lady Caroline quarrelled, she used to plant herself in his (Rogers') garden, waiting to catch him on his return home and beg him to effect a reconciliation; and he continues: "When she met Byron at a party, she would always, if possible, return home from it in _his_ carriage, and accompanied by _him_: I recollect particularly their returning to town together from Holland House. But such was the insanity of her passion for Byron that sometimes, when not invited to a party where he was to be, she would wait for him in the street till it was over! One night, after a great party at Devonshire House, to which Lady Caroline had not been invited, I saw her--yes, saw her--talking to Byron, with half of her body thrust into the carriage which he had just entered."