My way of dealing inferentially with admitted facts is this: On flashing in upon her sister and Shelley at Bishopgate, with joy in her face, Claire told them at once that she had won the great Byron’s heart, and was holding the place, for which Lady Byron had been found unworthy. On learning from her how she and Byron had arranged to journey to Geneva by different routes, in order that public attention should not be called to their movements and purpose, Shelley and Mary Godwin consented readily to her prayer, that they would take her out to her lover. In brief, this is my view of the case. Let readers decide for themselves, whether they should accept the view as reasonable or reject it as the reverse. What motive can Claire have had for concealing her tender and romantic intercourse with Byron from her sister Mary, living in Free Love with Shelley? Why should Claire have hesitated to avow her friendship with Byron to the poet and social reformer, who had taught alike, by precept and practice, that love should be free; that the love which yearned for marriage was the only sanction its marriage needed. The only motives a girl in Claire’s position could have for holding her passion from her sister’s knowledge would be motives of shame and delicacy. Such motives cannot be supposed to have influenced Claire’s action to her sister-by-affinity; the girl with whom she had studied _Queen Mab’s_ views about marriage, and the Chevalier Lawrence’s _Empire of the Nairs_; the spouse of a man to whom she was not married; the mother of a child who in the law’s eye, from one point of view, was no one’s child. What could Shelley discover of evil in Claire’s attachment to Byron? The thing he approved for himself was no thing for Shelley to disapprove in Byron’s case. The course which was virtuous for Mary, could not strike him as vicious for Mary’s sister.