But whilst admitting that the meeting resulted from pre-arrangement, Mr. Froude now insists that Byron and Claire were the only parties to the pre-arrangement, which (according to Field Place) was withheld by Claire from her travelling companions. Further, Mr. Froude maintains that, instead of being taken to Geneva by Shelley and her sister, Claire took them thither on her lap. Yet more:--Mr. Froude and his fellow-workers require us to believe that, when they accompanied her to Switzerland, without knowing or suspecting _why_ she wished to go there, Shelley and Mary Godwin disliked Claire extremely,--disliking her for being a malicious, spiteful, and altogether intolerable girl; regarding her disgustfully on account of her vicious notions respecting the intercourse of the sexes. Touring in pre-railway times with an odious companion was even more vexatious than touring with such a companion now-a-days. Yet Mr. Froude insists that Shelley and Mary Godwin associated themselves for several months of foreign touring, with a girl they disliked extremely, for the pure pleasure of her society. More still:--Mr. Froude wishes us to believe that, almost to the last day of their sojourn with Claire and Byron in Switzerland, neither Shelley nor Mary Godwin had the faintest suspicion that Claire was Byron’s mistress; and that though Byron was at pains to have his mistress brought out to him, under cover of her travelling companions, he never saw her at Geneva, except in the presence of some witness to the propriety of their demeanour to one another. Admitting that Byron talked to Claire on the most delicate subjects--such as the arrangements for her accouchement, and plans for the disposal of her child when it should be born--Mr. Froude insists that, throughout her stay in Switzerland, she could not easily have been alone with Byron, even for the shortest interview. Mr. Froude makes this statement, though it is a matter of sure personal history that, whilst Byron lived in the Villa Diodati, and Shelley (with Mary and Claire) in a cottage at the villa’s foot, the trio of the cottage often slept in Byron’s house after sitting up with him till dawn.