had no idea that her letter was written in that temper; and I think I need not assure you that, whatever mine or Mary's ideas might have been respecting the system of education you intended to adopt, we sympathize too much in your loss, and appreciate too well your feelings, to have allowed such a letter to be sent to you, had we suspected its contents."
A dead grief is easier to bear than a live trouble. By early summer, Shelley was able to report Miss Clairmont as once more "talkative and vivacious." It was he who befriended her to the end, and who bequeathed her a large share of his estate. It was he who saw—or deemed he saw—the image of Allegra rise smiling and beckoning from the sea.
According to the Countess Guiccioli, Byron bore the "profound sorrow" occasioned by his little daughter's death "with all the fortitude belonging to his great soul." In reality his sense of loss was tempered by relief. Allegra's future had always been to him a subject of anxiety, and it was not without an emotion of joy that he realized the child's escape from a world which he had found bad, and which he
