In the silence and shaded retirement of the sick-room, the daughter came wholly back to her mother’s arms and heart; and it was on that mother’s bosom that she leaned as she went down into the dark valley.  It was that mother who placed her weak and dying hand in that of her Almighty Saviour.

To the children left by her daughter, she ministered with the faithfulness of a guardian angel; and it is owing to her influence that those who yet remain are among the best and noblest of mankind.

The person whose relations with Byron had been so disastrous, also, in the latter years of her life, felt Lady Byron’s loving and ennobling influences, and, in her last sickness and dying hours, looked to her for consolation and help.

There was an unfortunate child of sin, born with the curse upon her, over whose wayward nature Lady Byron watched with a mother’s tenderness.  She was the one who could have patience when the patience of every one else failed; and though her task was a difficult one, from the strange abnormal propensities to evil in the object of her cares, yet Lady Byron never faltered, and never gave over, till death took the responsibility from her hands.

During all this trial, strange to say, her belief that the good in Lord Byron would finally conquer was unshaken.

To a friend who said to her, ‘Oh! how could you love him?’ she answered briefly, ‘My dear, there was the angel in him.’  It is in us all.

It was in this angel that she had faith.  It was for the deliverance of this angel from degradation and shame and sin that she unceasingly prayed.  She read every work that Byron wrote—­read it with a deeper knowledge than any human being but herself could possess.  The ribaldry and the obscenity and the insults with which he strove to make her ridiculous in the world fell at her pitying feet unheeded.

When he broke away from all this unworthy life to devote himself to a manly enterprise for the redemption of Greece, she thought that she saw the beginning of an answer to her prayers.  Even although one of his latest acts concerning her was to repeat to Lady Blessington the false accusation which made Lady Byron the author of all his errors, she still had hopes from the one step taken in the right direction.

In the midst of these hopes came the news of his sudden death.  On his death-bed, it is well-known that he called his confidential English servant to him, and said to him, ’Go to my sister; tell her—­Go to Lady Byron,—­you will see her,—­and say’—­

Here followed twenty minutes of indistinct mutterings, in which the names of his wife, daughter, and sister, frequently occurred.  He then said, ‘Now I have told you all.’

‘My lord,’ replied Fletcher, ’I have not understood a word your lordship has been saying.’

‘Not understand me!’ exclaimed Lord Byron with a look of the utmost distress:  ‘what a pity!  Then it is too late,—­all is over!’ He afterwards, says Moore, tried to utter a few words, of which none were intelligible except ‘My sister—­my child.’