Page:Journal of the Conversations of Lord Byron (1824).djvu/115

 day carry off her daughter by stealth or force. I might claim her of the Chancellor, without having recourse to either one or the other. But I had rather be unhappy myself, than make her mother so; probably I shall never see her again.”

Here he opened his writing-desk, and shewed me some hair, which he told me was his child’s.

During our drive and ride this evening, he declined our usual amusement of pistol-firing, without assigning a cause. He hardly spoke a word during the first half-hour, and it was evident that something weighed heavily on his mind. There was a sacredness in his melancholy that I dared not interrupt. At length be said:

“This is Ada’s birthday, and might have been the happiest day of my life: as it is !” He stopped, seemingly ashamed of having betrayed his feelings. He tried in vain to rally his spirits by turning the conversation; but he created a laugh in which he could not join, and soon relapsed into his former reverie. It lasted till we came within a mile of the gate. There our silence was all at once interrupted by shrieks that seemed to proceed