often accused who do not speak, who make no confidants and no parties,
the world soon loses sympathy.

When at last she spoke, Christopher North says 'she astonished the
world.' Calm, clear, courageous, exact as to time, date, and
circumstance, was that first testimony, backed by the equally clear
testimony of Dr. Lushington.

It showed that her secret had been kept even from her parents. In words
precise, firm, and fearless, she says, 'If these statements on which Dr.
Lushington and Sir Samuel Romilly formed their opinion were false, the
responsibility and the odium should rest with me only.' Christopher
North did not pretend to disbelieve this statement. He breathed not a
doubt of Lady Byron's word. He spoke of the crime indicated, as one
which might have been foul as the grave's corruption, unforgivable as the
sin against the Holy Ghost. He rebuked the wife for bearing this
testimony, even to save the memory of her dead father and mother, and, in
the same breath, declared that she ought now to go farther, and speak
fully the one awful word, and then--'a mitigated sentence, or eternal
silence!'

But Lady Byron took no counsel with the world, nor with the literary men
of her age. One knight, with some small remnant of England's old
chivalry, set lance in rest for her: she saw him beaten back unhorsed,
rolled in the dust, and ingloriously vanquished, and perceived that
henceforth nothing but injury could come to any one who attempted to
speak for her.

She turned from the judgments of man and the fond and natural hopes of
human nature, to lose herself in sacred ministries to the downcast and