“Ah! look not thus on me, so grave, so sad; Shake not your heads, nor say the Lady’s mad. Judge not of others, for there is but one To whom the heart and feelings can be known. Upon my youthful faults few censures cast; Look to the future--and forgive the past. London, farewell, vain world, vain life, adieu! Take the last tears I e’er shall shed for you. Young tho’ I seem, I leave the world for ever, Never to enter it again--no, never--never!” She was in a terrible state of uncertainty as to what she should now do with her life, and in discussing the matter with Lady Morgan makes all sorts of wild suggestions. Should she live a _good_ sort of a half kind of life in some cheap street, or above a shop, or give lectures to little children and keep a school and so earn her bread? Or should she write a sort of quiet everyday sort of novel, full of wholesome truths, or attempt to be poetical; or if she failed, beg her friends for a guinea apiece and their name to sell her work “on the best foolscap paper”; or should she fret and die? But Lady Caroline, with all her cleverness, was no artist in life, and did not realise that true wisdom and happiness resided in making the most of what she possessed, and that the thing for her to do was to occupy herself with her husband and child. All sorts of stories about her eccentricities got about. It was said that she beat a maid and turned her out of doors without clothes in the night, and tried to murder her page. The latter report she explains herself: “One day I was playing ball with him; he threw a squib into the fire. I threw the ball at his head; it hit him on the temple, and he bled. He cried out, ‘Oh, my lady, you have killed me!’ Out of my senses, I rushed into the hall and screamed, ‘O God, I have murdered the page!’ The servants and people in the street caught the sound, and it was soon spread about.” William Lamb saw that this sort of thing could not go on, and his family, who realised the harm it was doing to his career, insisted on a separation. While the instruments were being drawn up, Lady Caroline wrote her novel _Glenarvon_. Here is her own account of the proceeding: “In one month I wrote and sent _Glenarvon_ to the press. It was written at night, without the knowledge of any one but a governess, Miss Walsh. I sent for a copyist, and when he came she pointed to me seated at a table and dressed in boy’s clothes. He would not believe that a schoolboy would write such a thing. In a few days I received him dressed as usual. I told him the author, William Osmond, was dead.” She always declared that her husband was delighted with the book. It was not shown to him till it was printed.