Is this alleged conversation to be viewed as fact, or fiction?
evidence of sanity, or insanity?
Is the revelation which Lord Byron is said to have made to his wife of his 'incestuous passion' another delusion, having no foundation except in his wife's disordered imagination?
Are his alleged attempts to justify to Lady Byron's mind the morale of the plea of 'Continental latitude--the good-humoured marriage, in which complaisant couples mutually agree to form the cloak for each other's infidelities,'-- another morbid perversion of her imagination?
Did this conversation ever take place?
It will be difficult to separate one part of the 'True Story' from another, and maintain that this portion indicates insanity, and that portion represents sanity.

If we accept the hypothesis of hallucination, we are bound to view the whole of Lady Byron's conversations with Mrs.B.Stowe, and the written statement laid before her, as the wild and incoherent representations of a lunatic.

On the day when Lady Byron parted from her husband, did she enter his private room, and find him with the 'object of his guilty passion ?' and did he say, as they parted, 'When shall we three meet again ?' Is this to be considered as an actual occurrence, or as another form of hallucination?
It is quite inconsistent with the theory of Lady Byron's insanity to imagine that her delusion was restricted to the idea of his having committed 'incest.' In common fairness, we are bound to view the aggregate mental phenomena which she exhibited from the day of the marriage to their final separation and her death.

No person practically acquainted with the true characteristics of insanity would affirm, that, had this idea of 'incest' been an insane hallucination, Lady Byron could, from the lengthened period which intervened between her unhappy marriage and death, have refrained from exhibiting her mental alienation, not only to her legal advisers and trustees, but to others, exacting no pledge of secrecy from them as to her disordered impressions.
Lunatics do for a time, and for some special purpose, most cunningly conceal their delusions; but they have not the capacity to struggle for thirty-six years with a frightful hallucination, similar to the one Lady Byron is alleged to have had, without the insane state of mind becoming obvious to those with whom they are daily associating.

Neither is it consistent with experience to suppose that, if Lady Byron had been a monomaniac, her state of disordered understanding would have been restricted to one hallucination.