It is no new story that just four years after Shelley made her acquaintance, Fanny killed herself at Swansea. It is no new story that Claire was of opinion that Fanny so destroyed herself, from love of Shelley. Field Place is sure that Claire never really believed any such thing, but was only fibbing in her usual wicked way, when she uttered the story. It is curious to observe, how in the opinion of Field Place, Claire is by turns a liar and a witness of the highest credibility. When she says anything that fits-in with the biographical romance, which is to be substituted for Shelley’s true history, she is a virtuous witness; but when she utters anything at discord with the fictitious narrative, she becomes a miracle of mendacity. When she writes, or seems to have written, that she took Shelley and Mary against their will from London to Geneva; took them there without letting them know she was Byron’s mistress; and, living with them there, in the capacity of Byron’s mistress, managed matters so cleverly that they had no suspicion of her intimacy with Byron--statements so preposterous that they are not to be believed on any conceivable evidence--she is declared a witness of the highest credibility; and Mr. Froude is told-off to declare the preposterous statements must be true, because Claire made them in a withheld document. On the other hand, when this exemplary witness makes the quite credible statement, that Fanny committed suicide for love of Shelley, she is declared a mendacious witness, and Mr. Kegan Paul is instructed to write in _William Godwin; his Friends and Contemporaries_: ‘The theory, which owes its origin to Miss Clairmont, that Fanny was in love with Shelley, and that his flight with her sister prompted self-destruction, is one above all others absolutely groundless. To Shelley, as to Mary, she was an attached sister; she was never in love with him, either before or after her sister’s flight.’ How can Mr. Kegan Paul be justified in making this sweeping statement? He does not offer evidence, and can have no sufficient evidence, in support of the comprehensive assertion. At best his statement can be nothing more than Mrs. Shelley’s confident opinion, that her sister was never in love with Shelley. Which of the two, Mary or Claire, was the more likely to know the truth? Mary, who, after her flight with Shelley, saw but little of her sister Fanny; or Claire, who between the elopement in July 1814 and the spring of 1816, saw a great deal of Fanny? Mary, from whom Fanny, if she loved Shelley, would be careful to conceal the cause of her deepening melancholy; or Claire, to whom Fanny may have confided or unconsciously revealed the secret of her wretchedness?