"_The tempest of his heart in scorn had gazed On that the feebler Elements had raised. The Rapture of his Heart had looked on high, And asked if greater dwell beyond the sky: Chained to excess, the slave of each extreme, How woke he from the wildness of that dream! Alas! he told not--but he did awake To curse the withered heart that would not break._" And then, once more: "_These lips are mute, these eyes are dry; But in my breast and in my brain, Awake the pangs that pass not by, The thought that ne'er shall sleep again. My soul nor deigns nor dares complain, Though Grief and Passion there rebel: I only know we loved in vain-- I only feel--Farewell! Farewell!_" There is no need to quote more. Enough has been given to show how the passionate heart found passionate utterance, and what a wound the wrench had left. Afterwards, of course, when it was all over--or as much over as it ever would be--Byron realised that a man of twenty-six could not well consecrate all the rest of his years to lamentation. He had to live out his life somehow, with the help of incident of some sort; and incident in such a case must mean either a fresh love affair or marriage. In Byron's case it meant marriage--the very marriage which Lady Melbourne had designed as a distraction for him from the too-pointed attentions of Lady Caroline Lamb. CHAPTER XVI MARRIAGE Whatever doubts and mysteries environ the circumstances of Byron's separation from his wife, there is, at any rate, nothing to perplex us in the train of events which brought about his marriage, though the two common and conflicting theories have to be set aside. He did not marry Miss Milbanke for money; he did not marry her for love; he married her, partly because he had persuaded himself that he wanted a wife, and partly because she had made up her mind that he should do so. He cannot have married her for money because, at that date, her fortune was inconsiderable and her expectations were vague. She had only £10,000; and "good lives" stood between her and the prospect of any substantial inheritance. Seeing that Newstead, when put up to auction, was bought in for £90,000, a dowry of £10,000 was of no particular consequence to Byron, and if he had been fortune-hunting, he would have hunted bigger game. The fortune which he did capture was not enough to save him from almost instant financial embarrassments; and he faced that prospect as one who viewed it with indifference. "She is said," he wrote to Moore, "to be an heiress, but of that I really know nothing certainly, and shall not inquire. But I do know that she has talents and excellent qualities."