A volume of Byron’s poems lay before him on the table. He opened it cautiously with his left hand lest he should waken the child and began to read the first poem in the book:

“Hushed are the winds and still the evening gloom,

Not e’en a Zephyr wanders through the grove,

Whilst I return to view my Margaret’s tomb

And scatter flowers on the dust I love.”

“Hushed are the winds and still the evening gloom, Not e’en a Zephyr wanders through the grove, Whilst I return to view my Margaret’s tomb And scatter flowers on the dust I love.”