Shelley thought that their strained relations would in no way interfere with Hunt's prospects, and, with what looks a little like double-dealing, that it would be possible for him to preserve what influence he had over the "Proteus" until Hunt arrived: "It will be no very difficult task to execute that you have assigned me--to keep him in heart with the project until your arrival."[374] April 10, Shelley wrote again to Hunt of Byron's eagerness for his arrival: "he urges me to press you to depart." But a reference to the state of affairs in the two households in Italy carries a foreboding note: "Lord Byron has made me bitterly feel the inferiority which the world has presumed to place between us, and which subsists nowhere in reality but in our own talents, which are not our own but Nature's--or in our rank, which is not our own but Fortune's." With his usual humility, Shelley closes the letter with an apology for carrying his jealousy of Byron into Hunt's relations with him, and says: "You in the superiority of a wise and tranquil nature have well corrected and justly reproved me ... you will find much in me to correct and reprove."[375] During the summer Shelley continued to shrink more than ever from Byron; June 18 he declared to Hunt that he would not be the link between them for Byron is the "nucleus of all that is hateful." His one dread was that he might injure Hunt's prospects.[376] Between April and July Byron's enthusiasm had again cooled. Trelawny relates that Shelley when he went to Leghorn to meet Hunt, was greatly depressed by Lord Byron's "shuffling and equivocating," and, "but for imperilling Hunt's prospects," that Shelley would have abruptly terminated their intercourse.[377] On July 4 Shelley wrote to Mary from Pisa that "things are in the worst possible situation with respect to poor Hunt.... Lord Byron must of course furnish the requisite funds at present, as I cannot, but he seems inclined to depart without the necessary explanations and arrangements due to such a situation as Hunt's. These, in spite of delicacy, I must procure."[378] This dual attitude of Shelley has been variously viewed. Professor Dowden thinks it a "triumph of diplomacy,"[379] while Jeaffreson deems it a conspiracy of Hunt and Shelley against the innocent and unsuspecting Byron.