She did not act rashly in leaving him, though she had been most rash in marrying him.' Not all at once did the full knowledge of the dreadful reality into which she had entered come upon the young wife.

She knew vaguely, from the wild avowals of the first hours of their marriage, that there was a dreadful secret of guilt; that Byron's soul was torn with agonies of remorse, and that he had no love to give to her in return for a love which was ready to do and dare all for him.

Yet bravely she addressed herself to the task of soothing and pleasing and calming the man whom she had taken 'for better or for worse.' Young and gifted; with a peculiar air of refined and spiritual beauty; graceful in every movement; possessed of exquisite taste; a perfect companion to his mind in all the higher walks of literary culture; and with that infinite pliability to all his varying, capricious moods which true love alone can give; bearing in her hand a princely fortune, which, with a woman's uncalculating generosity, was thrown at his feet,--there is no wonder that she might feel for a while as if she could enter the lists with the very Devil himself, and fight with a woman's weapons for the heart of her husband.
There are indications scattered through the letters of Lord Byron, which, though brief indeed, showed that his young wife was making every effort to accommodate herself to him, and to give him a cheerful home.

One of the poems that he sends to his publisher about this time, he speaks of as being copied by her.

He had always the highest regard for her literary judgments and opinions; and this little incident shows that she was already associating herself in a wifely fashion with his aims as an author.
The poem copied by her, however, has a sad meaning, which she afterwards learned to understand only too well:-- 'There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away When the glow of early thought declines in feeling's dull decay: 'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek the blush alone that fades so fast; But the tender bloom of heart is gone e'er youth itself be past.
Then the few whose spirits float above the wreck of happiness Are driven o'er the shoals of guilt, or ocean of excess: The magnet of their course is gone, or only points in vain The shore to which their shivered sail shall never stretch again.' Only a few days before she left him for ever, Lord Byron sent Murray manuscripts, in Lady Byron's handwriting, of the 'Siege of Corinth,' and 'Parisina,' and wrote,-- 'I am very glad that the handwriting was a favourable omen of the morale of the piece: but you must not trust to that; for my copyist would write out anything I desired, in all the ignorance of innocence.' There were lucid intervals in which Lord Byron felt the charm of his wife's mind, and the strength of her powers.