It was not long before the intimacy of the two came very near the
point of open scandal; but Byron was the wooed and not the wooer.
This woman, older than he, flung herself directly at his head.
Naturally enough, it was not very long before she bored him
thoroughly. Her romantic impetuosity became tiresome, and very
soon she fell to talking always of herself, thrusting her poems
upon him, and growing vexed and peevish when he would not praise
them. As was well said, "he grew moody and she fretful when their
mutual egotisms jarred."

In a burst of resentment she left him, but when she returned, she
was worse than ever. She insisted on seeing him. On one occasion
she made her way into his rooms disguised as a boy. At another
time, when she thought he had slighted her, she tried to stab
herself with a pair of scissors. Still later, she offered her
favors to any one who would kill him. Byron himself wrote of her:

You can have no idea of the horrible and absurd things that she
has said and done.

Her story has been utilized by Mrs. Humphry Ward in her novel,
"The Marriage of William Ashe."

Perhaps this trying experience led Byron to end his life of
dissipation. At any rate, in 1813, he proposed marriage to Miss
Anne Millbanke, who at first refused him; but he persisted, and in
1815 the two were married. Byron seems to have had a premonition
that he was making a terrible mistake. During the wedding ceremony
he trembled like a leaf, and made the wrong responses to the