Miss Milbanke was convinced that his heart must really be deeply involved in an attachment with reference to which he showed such strength of emotion, and she spoke no more of a dissolution of the engagement.
There is no reason to doubt that Byron was, as he relates in his 'Dream,' profoundly agonized and agitated when he stood before God's altar with the trusting young creature whom he was leading to a fate so awfully tragic; yet it was not the memory of Mary Chaworth, but another guiltier and more damning memory, that overshadowed that hour.
The moment the carriage-doors were shut upon the bridegroom and the bride, the paroxysm of remorse and despair--unrepentant remorse and angry despair--broke forth upon her gentle head:-- 'You might have saved me from this, madam! You had all in your own power when I offered myself to you first.

Then you might have made me what you pleased; but now you will find that you have married a devil!' In Miss Martineau's Sketches, recently published, is an account of the termination of this wedding-journey, which brought them to one of Lady Byron's ancestral country seats, where they were to spend the honeymoon.
Miss Martineau says,-- 'At the altar she did not know that she was a sacrifice; but before sunset of that winter day she knew it, if a judgment may be formed from her face, and attitude of despair, when she alighted from the carriage on the afternoon of her marriage-day.

It was not the traces of tears which won the sympathy of the old butler who stood at the open door.

The bridegroom jumped out of the carriage and walked away.

The bride alighted, and came up the steps alone, with a countenance and frame agonized and listless with evident horror and despair.