The excuses to which she is entitled are those which were very obviously made for her by her husband and his mother. They did not quarrel with her, though they sometimes lost their temper with her; and--what is more to the purpose--they did not quarrel with Byron. Evidently, therefore, they held the view that Lady Caroline was responsible for Byron's conduct--but could not be held responsible for her own. They had the doctor's word for it that, though she was not mad, she might easily become so. If she was to be kept sane, she must be humoured. In humouring her up to a point, Byron had acted for the best. Neither a husband nor a mother-in-law could blame him for his unwillingness to go beyond that point. His proposal to fly with her may strike one as excessive; but it may perhaps be classed with the promises sometimes made to passionate children in the hope of keeping them quiet till the passion passes. There is really no reason to think that either William Lamb or Lady Melbourne regarded it in any other light. It was "really from the best motives," Byron assured Hodgson, that "I withdrew my homage." The best motives, as we shall perceive, were mixed with other motives; but they were doubtless there. Byron could justly speak of himself as "restoring a woman to her family, who are treating her with the greatest kindness, and with whom I am on good terms." It was only to be expected that he would be flattered by her attentions when he was twenty-four and new to society. It was equally to be expected that he should execute a retreat when he realised that he had to do with a _détraquée_ whose pursuit at once threatened a scandal and made him as well as her husband look ridiculous. The proofs that her mind was unhinged are ample. "She appears to me," wrote Lady H. Leveson Gower to Lady G. Morpeth, "in a state very little short of insanity, and my aunt describes it as at times having been very decidedly so." That is an example of the direct evidence; and the circumstantial evidence is even more abundant. The scene at the ball, of which Lady Caroline herself gave a spluttering account in a rambling and incoherent letter to Medwin, is only a part of it. An attempt which she made to forge Byron's signature in order to obtain his portrait from John Murray points to the same conclusion. The inconsistent and inconsequential picture which she draws of herself in her letters and her writings affords the most conclusive testimony of all.