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LADY CAROLINE LAMB subject to the annoyance of her vagaries. After a worse outburst than usual during dinner at Melbourne House, as soon as Lady Caroline had left the room, Lamb ordered the horses and drove off to Brocket. He sat up very late, but soon after he had gone to bed he heard sounds in the corridor. He got up to investigate what they might be, and found his wife lying on the doormat outside his room, convulsively sobbing.

Meantime Lady Caroline had formed a friendship with Lady Morgan and entered into correspondence with her when either was away from London. The details of the Byron affair are given in these letters, but they are interesting and amusing on other counts. In one Lady Caroline asks that the curious stories that get about as to her actions shall be contradicted, and proceeds to explain them away with great plausibility. In another she refers to a governess whose chief recommendation is that "she is attached to an old mathematician in Russia—a Platonic attachment," and they are not to marry or meet for ten years. "Now," Lady Caroline continues, "as every one must, will, and should fall in love, it is no bad thing that she should have a happy, Platonic, romantic attachment to an old, mad mathematician several 27