'Agnus' is furious," he writes to Hodgson, in February, 1813, in one of
the somewhat ungenerous bursts to which he was too easily provoked. "You
can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things she has said and done
since (really from the best motives) I withdrew my homage.... The
business of last summer I broke off, and now the amusement of the gentle
fair is writing letters literally threatening my life." With one member of
the family, Lady Melbourne, Mr. Lamb's mother, and sister of Sir Ralph
Milbanke, he remained throughout on terms of pleasant intimacy. He
appreciated the talent and sense, and was ready to profit by the
experience and tact of "the cleverest of women." But her well-meant advice
had unfortunate results, for it was on her suggestion that he became a
suitor for the hand of her niece, Miss Milbanke. Byron first proposed to
this lady in 1813; his offer was refused, but so graciously that they
continued to correspond on friendly, which gradually grew into intimate
terms, and his second offer, towards the close of the following year, was
accepted.

[Footnote 1: Mr. Trelawny says that Thyrza was a cousin, but that on
this subject Byron was always reticent. Mr. Minto, as we have seen,
associates her with the disguised girl of 1807-8.]

After a series of vain protests, and petulant warnings against her cousin
by marriage, who she said was punctual at church, and learned, and knew
statistics, but was "not for Conrad, no, no, no!" Lady Caroline lapsed
into an attitude of fixed hostility; and shortly after the crash came, and
her predictions were realized, vented her wrath in the now almost
forgotten novel of _Glenarvon_, in which some of Byron's real features
were represented in conjunction with many fantastic additions. Madame de
Staël was kind enough to bring a copy of the book before his notice when
they met on the Lake of Geneva, but he seems to have been less moved by it