"Yesterday, a very pretty letter from Annabella, which I answered. What an odd situation and friendship is ours!--without one spark of love on either side, and produced by circumstances which in general lead to coldness on one side and aversion on the other. She is a very superior woman, and very little spoiled.... She is a poetess--a mathematician--a metaphysician, and yet withal, very kind, generous, and gentle, with very little pretension. Any other head would be turned with half her acquisitions, and a tenth of her advantages." That is what Byron says; but Hobhouse adds a little more. He says that Byron at first "believed that a certain eccentricity of education had produced this communication from a young woman otherwise notorious for the strictest propriety of conduct and demeanour." He also says that the tone of the communications grew in warmth as the correspondence proceeded, and that Byron did not make up his mind to propose marriage a second time until "after certain expressions had been dropped by Miss Milbanke in her letters which might easily have encouraged a bolder man than his lordship." He says finally, and this he says, in italics, that when Byron did propose for the second time, Miss Milbanke _accepted him by return of post_. To which piece of information Moore adds the statement that in order to make assurance doubly sure, she sent her acceptance in duplicate to his town and his country addresses. It reached him at Hastings; and Miss Milbanke proceeded to impart her news to her friends. A passage from one of the letters--that to Miss Milner--shows not only that she was very happy in the prospect of her marriage, but also that she had woefully deceived herself as to the circumstances which had preceded and led up to the proposal: "You only know me truly in thinking that without the highest moral esteem I could never have yielded to, if I had been weak enough to form, an attachment. It is not in the great world that Lord Byron's true character must be sought; but ask of those nearest to him--of the unhappy whom he has consoled, of the poor whom he has blessed, of the dependants to whom he is the best of masters. For his despondency I fear I am but too answerable for the last two years."