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The season over , change of air, sea-bathing, French masters to finish our education, and economy were loudly called for; and we turned our faces towards some quiet place on the opposite shores of France, and we thought that Boulogne might suit. We were soon ready and off.

We had a pleasant but rough passage of fifteen hours from London. While the others were employed in bringing up their breakfasts, I sat on deck and mused. Suddenly I remembered that Hagar had told me I should cross the sea, and then I wondered why we had chosen Boulogne. I was leaving England for the first time; I knew not for how long. What should I go through there, and how changed should I come back? I had gone with a light heart. I was young then; I loved society and hated exile. I had written in my diary only a little time before: "As for me, I am never better pleased than when I watch this huge game of chess, Life, being played on that extensive chessboard, Society." I never felt so patriotic as that first morning on sea when the white cliffs faded from my view. We never appreciate things until we lose them, and I thought of what the feelings of soldiers and sailors must be, going from England and returning after years of absence.

When they were gone, we set to work and unpacked and dressed, and by the afternoon were as comfortable as we could make ourselves; but we were thoroughly wretched, though mother kept telling us to look at the beautiful sky, which was not half as blue or bright as on the other side of the water. We sauntered out to look at the town. I own my first impressions of France were very unfavourable; Boulogne looked to me like a dirty pack of cards, such as a gypsy pulls out of her pocket to tell your fortune with. The streets were irregular, narrow, filthy, and full of open gutters, which we thought would give us the cholera. The pavement was like that of a mews; the houses were unfurnished; the sea was so far out from our part of the town that it might as well not have been there--and such a dirty, ugly-looking sea too, we thought! The harbour was full of poisonous-looking smelling mud, and always appeared to be low water. The country was dry, barren, and a dirty brown ; the cliffs were black; and there was not a tree to be seen--I used to pretend to get under a lamp-post for shade. Every now and then we had days of fine weather, with clouds of dust and sirocco, or else pouring rain and bleak winds. From mother's talk of the Continent we expected at least the comforts of Brighton with the romance of Naples; and I shall never forget our feelings when we were told that, after Paris, Boulogne was the nicest town in France. Now I imagine that ours are the feelings of every narrow-minded, prejudiced John Bull Britisher the first time he lands abroad. It takes him some little time to thoroughly appreciate all the good things that he does get abroad, and to be fascinated with the picturesqueness, and then often he returns home unwillingly.

We had a cheap cook, so that our dinners would have been scarcely served up in my father's kennel at home. When I had eaten what I could pick out by dint of shutting my eyes and forcing myself to get it down, I used to lie down daily on a large horsehair sofa, such as one sees in a tradesman's office, and sometimes cry till I fell asleep; I felt so sorry for us all.

I have already said that we were taken to Boulogne for masters and economy. Our house in the Haute Ville was next to the Convent, and close to the future rising--slowly rising--Notre Dame. My sister Blanche and I gradually made up our minds to this life, our European Botany Bay. We were not allowed to walk alone, except upon the Ramparts, which, however, make a good mile under large shady trees, with views from every side--not a bad walk by any means. Mother, my sister Blanche, and I used to walk once daily up the lounge, which in fine weather was down the Grande Rue, the Rue de l'Ecu, the Quai to the end of the pier and back; but in winter our promenade may be said to be confined to the Grande Rue. There we could observe the notorieties and eccentricities of the place. There might be a dozen or more handsome young men of good family, generally with something shady about money hanging over them, a great many pretty, fast girls and young married women, a great deal of open flirtation, much attention to dress, and plenty of old half-pay officers with large families, who had come to Boulogne for the same reasons as ourselves. If there were any good families, they lived in the Haute Ville, and were English; there were, in fact, half a dozen aristocratic English families, who stuck together and would speak to nobody else. I have learnt since that often in a place one dislikes there will arise some circumstance that will prove the pivot on which part, or the whole, of one's life may turn, and that scene, that town, or that house will in after-years retain a sacred place in one's heart for that thing's sake, which a gayer or a grander scene could never win. And so it was with me.

Richard Burton came of a military family, and one whose sons had also rendered some service both in Church and State. He was the son of Joseph Netterville Burton, a lieutenant-colonel in the 36th Regiment. He was born in 1821. He was the eldest of three children; the second was Maria Catherine Eliza, who married General Sir Henry Stisted; and the third was Edward Joseph Netterville, late Captain in the 37th Regiment , who died insane. Colonel Burton, who had retired from the army, and his wife went abroad for economy when Richard was only a few months old, and they settled at Tours. Tours at that time contained some two hundred English families, who formed a society of their own. These English colonies knew little of Mrs. Grundy, and less of the dull provincialism of English country towns. Thus Richard grew up in a free, Bohemian society, an influence which perceptibly coloured his after-life. His education was also of a nature to develop his strongly marked individuality. He was sent to a mixed French and English school at Tours, and he remained there until his father suddenly took it into his head that he would give his boys the benefit of an English education, and returned to England. But, instead of going to a public school, Richard was sent to a private preparatory school at Richmond. He was there barely a year, when his father, wearying of Richmond and respectability, and sighing for the shooting and boar-hunting of French forests, felt that he had sacrificed enough on account of an English education for his boys, and resolved to bring them up abroad under the care of a private tutor. This resolution he quickly put into practice, and a wandering life on the Continent followed, the boys being educated as they went along. This state of things continued till Richard was nineteen, when, as he and his brother had got too old for further home training, the family broke up.

Richard was sent to Oxford, and was entered at Trinity College, with the intention of taking holy orders in the Church of England. But the roving Continental life which he had led did not fit him for the restraints of the University. He hated Oxford, and he was not cut out for a parson. At the end of the first year he petitioned his father to take him away. This was refused; so he set to work to get himself sent down--a task which he accomplished with so much success that the next term he was rusticated, with an intimation that he was not to return. Even at this early period of his life the glamour of the East was strong upon him; the only learning he picked up at Oxford was a smattering of Hindustani; the only thing that would suit him when he was sent down was to go to India. He turned to the East as the lotus turns with the sun. So his people procured him a commission in the army, the Indian service, and he sailed for Bombay in June, 1842.

He was appointed to the 14th Regiment, Bombay Native Infantry, and he remained in India without coming home for seven years. During those seven years he devoted himself heart and soul to the study of Oriental languages and Oriental habits. He passed in ten Eastern languages. His interest in Oriental life, and his strong sympathy with it, earned him in his regiment the nickname of "the white nigger." He would disguise himself so effectually that he would pass among Easterns as a dervish in the mosques and as a merchant in the bazaars. In 1844 Richard Burton went to Scinde with the 18th Native Infantry, and was put on Sir Charles Napier's staff. Sir Charles soon turned the young lieutenant's peculiar acquirements to account in dealing with the wild tribes around them. He accompanied his regiment to Mooltan to attack the Sikhs. Yet, notwithstanding all these unique qualifications, when Richard Burton applied for the post of interpreter to accompany the second expedition to Mooltan in 1849, he was passed over on account of a feeling against him in high quarters, on which it is unnecessary here to dwell. This disappointment, and the mental and physical worry and fatigue which he had undergone, broke down his health. He applied for sick leave, and came home on a long furlough.

After a sojourn in England, he went to France to join his family, who were then staying at Boulogne, like the Arundells and most of the English colony, for change, quiet, and economy. Whilst at Boulogne he brought out two or three books and prepared another. Burton took a gloomy view of his prospects at this time; for he writes, "My career in India has been in my eyes a failure, and by no fault of my own; the dwarfish demon called 'Interest' has fought against me, and as usual has won the fight." There was a good deal of prejudice against him even at Boulogne, for unfounded rumours about him had travelled home from India.

One day, when we were on the Ramparts, the vision of my awakening brain came towards us. He was five feet eleven inches in height, very broad, thin, and muscular; he had very dark hair; black, clearly defined, sagacious eyebrows; a brown, weather-beaten complexion; straight Arab features; a determined-looking mouth and chin, nearly covered by an enormous black moustache. I have since heard a clever friend say that "he had the brow of a god, the jaw of a devil." But the most remarkable part of his appearance was two large, black, flashing eyes with long lashes, that pierced one through and through. He had a fierce, proud, melancholy expression; and when he smiled, he smiled as though it hurt him, and looked with impatient contempt at things generally. He was dressed in a black, short, shaggy coat, and shouldered a short, thick stick, as if he were on guard.

I did not try to attract his attention; but after that, whenever he came on the usual promenade, I would invent any excuse that came ready to take another turn to watch him, if he were not looking. If I could catch the sound of his deep voice, it seemed to me so soft and sweet that I remained spellbound, as when I hear gypsy music. I never lost an opportunity of seeing him, when I could not be seen; and as I used to turn red and pale, hot and cold, dizzy and faint, sick and trembling, and my knees used to nearly give way under me, my mother sent for the doctor, to complain that my digestion was out of order, and that I got migraines in the street; he prescribed me a pill, which I threw in the fire. All girls will sympathize with me. I was struck with the shaft of Destiny, but I had no hope, being nothing but an ugly schoolgirl, of taking the wind out of the sails of the dashing creature with whom Richard was carrying on a very serious flirtation.

My cousin asked Richard to write something for me at that time; he did so, and I used to wear it next my heart. One night an exception was made to our dull rule of life. My cousins gave a tea party and dance, and the "great majority" flocked in, and there was Richard like a star among rushlights! That was a night of nights; he waltzed with me once, and spoke to me several times, and I kept my sash where he put his arm round my waist to waltz, and my gloves, which his hands had clasped. I never wore them again. I did not know it then, but the "little cherub who sits up aloft" was not only occupied in taking care of poor Jack, for I came in also for a share of it. I saw Richard every now and again after that, but he was of course unconscious of my feelings towards him. And I was evidently awfully sorry for myself, since I find recorded the following moan:

"If kind Providence had blessed me with the man I love, what a different being I might be! Fate has used me hardly, with my proud, sensitive nature to rough the world and its sharp edges, alone and unprotected except by hard and peremptory rules."

So I thought then; but I have often blessed those rules since. A woman may have known the illusions of love, but never have met an object worth all her heart. Sometimes we feel a want of love, and a want to love with all our energies. There is no man capable of receiving this at the time, and we accept the love of others as a makeshift, an apology, to draw our intention from the painful feeling, and try to fancy it is love. How much in this there is to fear! A girl should be free and happy in real and legitimate love. One who is passionate and capable of suffering fears to risk her heart on any man. Happy is she who meets at her first start the man who is to guide her for life, whom she is always to love. Some women grow fastidious in solitude, and find it harder to be mated than married. Those who fear and respect the men they love, those whose judgment and sense confirm their affection, are lucky. Every one has some mysterious and singular idea respecting his destiny. I asked myself then if I would sacrifice anything and everything for Richard, and the only thing that I found I could not sacrifice for him would be God; for I thought I would as soon, were I a man, forsake my post, when the tide of battle pressed hardest against it, and go over to the enemy, as renounce my God. So having sifted my unfortunate case, I soon decided on a plan of action. I could not push myself forward or attract his notice. It would be unmaidenly--unworthy. I shuddered at the lonely and dreary path I was taking; but I knew that no advantage gained by unworthy means could be lasting or solid; besides, my conscience was tender, and I knew that the greatest pleasure unlawfully obtained would eventually become bitter, for there can be no greater pain than to despise oneself or the one we love. So I suffered much and long; and the name of the tribe, as Hagar Burton foretold, caused me many a sorrowful and humiliating hour; but I rose superior at last. They say that often, when we think our hopes are annihilated, God is granting us some extraordinary favour. It is said, "It is easy to image the happiness of some particular condition, until we can be content with no other"; but there is no condition whatever under which a certain degree of happiness may not be attained by those who are inclined to be happy. Courage consists, not in hazarding without fear, but in being resolutely minded in a just cause.

Marvel not at thy life; patience shall see The perfect work of wisdom to her given; Hold fast thy soul through this high mystery, And it shall lead thee to the gates of heaven.

Our prescribed two years were up at last, and we all agreed that anything in London would be preferable to Boulogne. We began quietly to pack up, pay our debts, and make our adieux. We were sorry to leave our little circle; they were also sorry to part from us; and the tradespeople and servants seemed conscious that they were about to lose in a short while some honest and safe-paying people--not too frequent in Boulogne--and were loud in their regrets. I had many regrets in leaving, but was delighted at the prospect of going home, and impatient to be relieved of the restraint I was obliged to impose on myself about Richard. Yet at the same time I dreaded leaving his vicinity. I was sorely sorry, yet glad. All the old haunts I visited for the last time. There were kind friends to wish good-bye. I received my last communion in the little chapel of Our Lady in the College, where I had so often knelt and prayed for Richard, and for strength to bear my sorrow as a trial from the hand of God, as doubtless it was for my good, only I could not see it. When one is young, it is hard to pine for something, and at the same time to say, "Thy will be done." I always prayed Richard might be mine if God willed it, and if it was for his happiness.

I said good-bye to Carolina, the queen of the fisherwomen; she reminded me strangely of Hagar Burton, my gypsy. I wondered how Hagar would tell her prophecies now? "Chance or not," I thought, "they are strange; and if ever I return to my home, I will revisit Stonymoore Wood, though now alone; for my shaggy Sikh is dead, my pony gone, my gypsy camp dispersed, my light heart no longer light, no longer mine." I would give worlds to sit again on the mossy bank round the gypsy fire, to hear that little tale as before, and be called "Daisy," and hear the prophecy of Hagar that I should take the name of the tribe. I listened lightly then; but now that the name had become so dear I attached much deeper meaning to it.

At last the day was fixed that we were to leave Boulogne, May 9, 1852, and I was sorely exercised in my mind as to whether or no I should say good-bye to Richard; but I said to myself, "When we leave this place, he will go one way in life, and I another; and who knows if we may ever meet again?" To see him would be only to give myself more pain, and therefore I did not.

We walked down to the steamer an hour or two before sailing-time, which would be two in the morning. It was midnight; the band was playing, and the steamer was alongside, opposite the Folkestone Hotel. It was a beautiful night, so all our friends collected to see us off, and we walked up and down, and had chairs to remain near the band. When we sailed, my people went down to their berths; but I sat near the wheel, to watch the town as long as I could see the lights, for after all it contained all I wanted, and who I thought I should never see more. I was sad at heart; but I was proud of the way in which I had behaved, and I could now rest after my long and weary struggle, suffering, patient, and purified; and though I would rather have had love and happiness, I felt that I was as gold tried in the fire. It is no little thing for a girl to be able to command herself, to respect herself, and to be able to crush every petty feeling.

When I could see no more of Boulogne, I wrapped a cloak round me, and jumped into the lifeboat lashed to the side, and I mused on the two past years I had been away from England, all I had gone through, and all the changes, and especially how changed I was myself; I felt a sort of satisfaction, and I mused on how much of my destiny had been fulfilled. Old Captain Tune, who had become quite a friend of ours at Boulogne, came up, and wanted me to go below. I knew him well, and was in the habit of joking with him, and I told him to go below himself, and I would take care of the ship; so instead he amused me by telling me stories and asking me riddles. The moon went down, and the stars faded, and I slept well; and when I awoke the star of my destiny, my pet morning star, was shining bright and clear, just "like a diamond drop over the sea." I awoke, hearing old Tune say, "What a jolly sailor's wife she would make! She never changes colour." We lurched terribly. I jumped up as hungry as a hunter, and begged him to give me some food, as it wanted four hours to breakfast; so he took me down to his cabin, and gave me some hot chops and bread-and-butter, and said he would rather keep me for a week than a fortnight. It blew freshly. I cannot describe my sensations when I saw the dear old white cliffs of England again, though I had only been away two years, and so near home. The tears came into my eyes, and my heart bounded with joy, and I felt great sympathy with all exiled soldiers and sailors, and wondered what face we should see first. Foreigners do not seem to have that peculiar sensation about home, or talk of their country as we do of ours; for I know of no feeling like setting one's foot on English ground again after a long absence.

I was fancy free and unknew I love, But I fell in love and in madness fell; I write you with tears of eyes so belike, They explain my love, come my heart to quell.

ALF LAYLAH WA LAYLAH .

On leaving Boulogne, Isabel saw Richard Burton no more for four years, and only heard of him now and again from others or through the newspapers. She went back to London with her people, and outwardly took up life and society again much where she had left it two years before. But inwardly things were very different. She had gone to Boulogne an unformed girl; she had left it a loving woman. Her ideal had taken form and shape; she had met the only man in all the world whom she could love, the man to whom she had been "destined from the beginning," and her love for him henceforth became, next to her religion, the motive power of her actions and the guiding principle of her life. All her youth, until she met him, she had yearned for something, she hardly knew what. That something had come to her, sweeter than all her young imaginings, glorifying her life and flooding her soul with radiance. And after the light there had come the darkness; after the joy there had come keenest pain; for it seemed that her love was given to one who did not return it--nay, more, who was all unconscious of it. But this did not hinder her devotion, though her maidenly reserve checked its outward expression. She had met her other self in Richard Burton. He was her affinity. A creature of impulse and emotion, there was a certain vein of thought in her temperament which responded to the recklessness in his own. She could no more stifle her love for him than she could stifle her nature, for the love she bore him was part of her nature, part of herself.

Meanwhile she and her sister Blanche, the sister next to her in age, had to take the place in society suited to young ladies of their position. Their father, Mr. Henry Raymond Arundell, though in comfortable circumstances, was not a wealthy man; but in those days money was not the passport to society, and the Miss Arundells belonged by birth to the most exclusive aristocracy of Europe, the Catholic nobility of England, an aristocracy which has no parallel, unless it be found in the old Legitimist families of France, the society of the Faubourg St. Germain. But this society, though undoubtedly exclusive, was also undoubtedly tiresome to the impetuous spirit of Isabel, who chafed at the restraints by which she was surrounded. She loved liberty; her soaring spirit beat its wings against the prison-bars of custom and convention; she was always yearning for a wider field. Deep down in her heart was hidden the secret of her untold love, and this robbed the zest from the pleasure she might otherwise have taken in society. Much of her time was spent in confiding to her diary her thoughts about Richard, and in gleaning together and treasuring in her memory every scrap of news she could gather concerning him. At the same time she was not idle, nor did she pine outwardly after the approved manner of love-sick maidens. As the eldest daughter of a large family she had plenty to do in the way of home duties, and it was not in her nature to shirk any work which came in her way, but to do it with all her might.

The Miss Arundells had no lack of admirers, and more than once Isabel refused or discouraged advantageous offers of marriage, much to the perplexity of her mother, who naturally wished her daughters to make good marriages; that is to say, to marry men of the same religion as themselves, and in the same world--men who would make them good husbands in every sense of the word. But Isabel, who was then twenty-one years of age, had a strong will of her own, and very decided views on the subject of marriage, and she turned a deaf ear to all pleadings. Besides, was she not guarded by the talisman of a hidden and sacred love? In her diary at this time she writes:

"I would have every woman marry; not merely liking a man well enough to accept him for a husband, as some of our mothers teach us, and so cause many unhappy marriages, but loving him so holily that, wedded or not wedded, she feels she is his wife at heart. But perfect love, like perfect beauty, is rare. I would have her so loyal, that, though she sees all his little faults herself, she takes care no one else sees them; yet she would as soon think of loving him less for them as ceasing to look up to heaven because there were a few clouds in the sky. I would have her so true, so fond, that she needs neither to burthen him with her love nor vex him with her constancy, since both are self-existent, and entirely independent of anything he gives or takes away. Thus she will not marry him for liking, esteem, gratitude for his love, but from the fulness of her own love. If Richard and I never marry, God will cause us to meet in the next world; we cannot be parted; we belong to one another. Despite all I have seen of false, foolish, weak attachments, unholy marriages, the after-life of which is rendered unholier still by struggling against the inevitable, still I believe in the one true love that binds a woman's heart faithful to one man in this life, and, God grant it, in the next. All this I am and could be for one man. But how worthless should I be to any other man but Richard Burton! I should love Richard's wild, roving, vagabond life; and as I am young, strong, and hardy, with good nerves, and no fine notions, I should be just the girl for him; I could never love any one who was not daring and spirited. I always feel inclined to treat the generality of men just like my own sex. I am sure I am not born for a jog-trot life; I am too restless and romantic. I believe my sister and I have now as much excitement and change as most girls, and yet I find everything slow. I long to rush round the world in an express; I feel as if I shall go mad if I remain at home. Now with a soldier of fortune, and a soldier at heart, one would go everywhere, and lead a life worth living. What others dare I can dare. And why should I not? I feel that we women simply are born, marry, and die. Who misses us? Why should we not have some useful, active life? Why, with spirits, brains, and energies, are women to exist upon worsted work and household accounts? It makes me sick, and I will not do it."

The news of his marvellous pilgrimage was soon noised abroad, and travelled home; all sorts of rumours flew about, though it was not until the following year that his book, giving a full and detailed account of his visit to Mecca, came out. Burton's name was on the lips of many. But he was in India, and did not come home to reap the reward of his daring, nor did he know that one faithful heart was full of joy and thanksgiving at his safety and pride at his renown. He did not know that the "little girl" he had met now and again casually at Boulogne was thinking of him every hour of the day, dreaming of him every night, praying every morning and evening and at the altar of her Lord, with all the fervour of her pure soul, that God would keep him now and always, and bring him back safe and sound, and in His own good time teach him to love her. He did not know. How could he? He had not yet sounded the height, depth, and breadth of a woman's love. And yet, who shall say that her supplications were unheeded before the throne of God? Who shall say that it was not Isabel's prayers, quite as much as Richard Burton's skill and daring, which shielded him from danger and detection and carried him safe through all?

In Isabel's diary at this time there occurs the following note:

"Richard has just come back with flying colours from Mecca; but instead of coming home, he has gone to Bombay to rejoin his regiment. I glory in his glory. God be thanked!"

Then a sense of desolation and hopelessness sweeps over her soul, for she writes:

"But I am alone and unloved. Love can illumine the dark roof of poverty, and can lighten the fetters of a slave; the most miserable position of humanity is tolerable with its support, and the most splendid irksome without its inspiration. Whatever harsher feelings life may develop, there is no one whose brow will not grow pensive at some tender reminiscence, whose heart will not be touched. Oh if I could but go through life trusting one faithful heart and pressing one dear hand! Is there no hope for me? I am so full of faith. Is there no pity for so much love? It makes my heart ache, this future of desolation and distress; it ever flits like the thought of death before my eyes. There is no more joy for me; the lustre of life is gone. How swiftly my sorrow followed my joy! I can laugh, dance, and sing as others do, but there is a dull gnawing always at my heart that wearies me. There is an end of love for me, and of all the bright hopes that make the lives of other girls happy and warm and pleasant."

Burton did not stay long at Bombay after he rejoined his regiment. He was not popular in it, and he disliked the routine. Something of the old prejudice against him in certain quarters was revived. The East India Company, in whose service he was, had longed wished to explore Harar in Somaliland, Abyssinia; but it was inhabited by a very wild and savage people, and no white man had ever dared to enter it. So it was just the place for Richard Burton, and he persuaded the Governor of Bombay to sanction an expedition to Harar; and with three companions, Lieutenant Herne, Lieutenant Stroyan, and Lieutenant Speke, he started for Harar.

From her watch-tower afar off, Isabel, whose ceaseless love followed him night and day, notes:

"And now Richard has gone to Harar, a deadly expedition or a most dangerous one, and I am full of sad forebodings. Will he never come home? How strange it all is, and how I still trust in Fate! The Crimean War is declared, and troops begin to go out."

A little later the following note occurs in Isabel's diary:

"We got the news of Richard's magnificent ride to Harar, of his staying ten days in Harar, of his wonderful ride back, his most daring expedition, and then we heard of the dreadful attack by the natives in his tent, and how Stroyan was killed, Herne untouched, Speke with eleven wounds, and Richard with a lance through his jaw. They escaped in a native dhow to Aden, and it was doubtful whether Richard would recover. Doubtless this is the danger alluded to by the clairvoyant, and the cause of my horrible dreams concerning him about the time it happened. I hope to Heaven he will not go back! How can I be grateful enough for his escape!"

Burton did not go back. He was so badly wounded that he had to return to England on sick leave, and sorely discomfited. Here his wounds soon healed, and he regained his health. He read an account of his journey to Harar before the Royal Geographical Society; but the paper attracted little or no attention, one reason being that the public interest was at that time absorbed in the Crimean War. Strange to say, the paper, until it was over, did not reach the ears of Isabel, nor did she once see the man on whom all her thoughts were fixed during his stay in England. It was of course impossible for her to take the initiative. Moreover, Burton was invalided most of the time, and in London but little. His visit to England was a short one. After a month's rest he obtained leave--after considerable difficulty, for he was no favourite with the War Office--to start for the Crimea, and reached there in October, 1854. He had some difficulty in obtaining a post, but at last he became attached to General Beatson's staff, and was the organizer of the Irregular Cavalry , a fact duly noted in Isabel's diary.

The winter of 1854-55 was a terrible one for our troops in the Crimea, and public feeling in England was sorely exercised by the account of their sufferings and privations. The daughters of England were not backward in their efforts to aid the troops. Florence Nightingale and her staff of nurses were doing their noble work in the army hospitals at Scutari; and it was characteristic of Isabel that she should move heaven and earth to join them. In her journal at this time we find the following:

But she could not be idle. She could not sit with folded hands and think of her dear one and her brave countrymen out yonder suffering untold privations, and do nothing. It was not enough for her to weep and hope and pray. So the next thing she thought of was a scheme for aiding the almost destitute wives and families of the soldiers, a work which, if she had done nothing else, should be sufficient to keep her memory green, prompted as it was by that generous, loving heart of hers, which ever found its chiefest happiness in doing good to others. She thus describes her scheme:

"I set to work to form a girls' club composed of girls. My plan was to be some little use at home. First it was called the 'Whistle Club,' because we all had tiny silver whistles; and then we changed it to the 'Stella Club,' in honour of the morning star--my star. Our principal object was to do good at home amongst the destitute families of soldiers away in the Crimea; to do the same things as those we would have done if we had the chance out yonder amongst the soldiers themselves. We started a subscription soup-cauldron and a clothing collection, and we got from the different barracks a list of the women and their children married, with or without leave. We ascertained their real character and situations, and no destitute woman was to be left out, nor any difference made on account of religion. The women were to have employment; the children put to schools according to their respective religions, and sent to their own churches. Lodging, food, and clothes were given according to our means, and words of comfort to all, teaching the poor creatures to trust in God for themselves and their husbands at the war--the only One from whom we could all expect mercy. We undertook the wives and families of all regiments of the Lifeguards and Blues and the three Guards' regiments. We went the rounds twice a week, and met at the club once a week. There were three girls to each locality; all of us dressed plainly and behaved very quietly, and acknowledged no acquaintances while going our rounds. We carried this out to the letter, and I cannot attempt to describe the scenes of misery we saw, nor the homes that we saved, nor the gratitude of the soldiers later when they returned from the war and found what we had done. It has been a most wonderful success, and I am very happy at having been of some use. The girls responded to the rules, which were rigorously carried out; and when I look at my own share of the business, and multiply that by a hundred and fifty girls, I think the good done must have been great. In ten days, by shillings and sixpences, I alone collected a hundred guineas, not counting what the others did. My beat contained one hundred women of all creeds and situations, and about two hundred children. I spared no time nor exertions over and above the established rules. I read and wrote their letters, visited the sick and dying, and did a number of other things.

After the fall of Sebastopol the war was virtually at an end, and the allied armies wintered amid its ruins. The treaty of peace was signed at Paris on March 30, 1856. Five months before the signing of the treaty Richard Burton returned home with General Beatson, his commander-in-chief, who was then involved in an unfortunate controversy. An evil genius seemed to follow Burton's military career, and it pursued him from India to the Crimea. He managed to enrage Lord Stratford so much that he called him "the most impudent man in the Bombay army." He was certainly one of the most unlucky, even in his choice of chiefs. Sir Charles Napier, under whom he served in India, was far from popular with his superiors; and General Beatson was always in hot water. The Beatson trial was the result of one of the many muddles which arose during the Crimean War; it took place in London in the spring , and Burton gave evidence in favour of his chief. But this is by the way. What we are chiefly concerned with is the following line in Isabel's diary, written soon after his return to England:

"I hear that Richard has come home, and is in town. God be praised!"

That which followed will be told in her own words.

Daughter of nobles, who thine aim shalt gain, Hear gladdest news, nor fear aught hurt or bane.

ALF LAYLAH WA LAYLAH .

Now this is what occurred. When Richard was well home from the Crimea, and had attended Beatson's trial, he began to turn his attention to the "Unveiling of Isis"; in other words, to discover the sources of the Nile, the lake regions of Central Africa, on which his heart had long been set; and he passed most of his time in London working it up.

We did not meet for some months after his return, though we were both in London, he planning his Central African expedition, and I involved in the gaieties of the season; for we had a gay season that year, every one being glad that the war was over. In June I went to Ascot. There, amid the crowd of the racecourse, I met Hagar Burton, the gypsy, for the first time after many years, and I shook hands with her. "Are you Daisy Burton yet?" was her first question. I shook my head. "Would to God I were!" Her face lit up. "Patience; it is just coming." She waved her hand, for at that moment she was rudely thrust from the carriage. I never saw her again, but I was engaged to Richard two months later. It came in this wise.

Next morning we went to the Botanical Gardens again. When we got there, he was there too, alone, composing some poetry to show to Monckton Milnes on some pet subject. He came forward, and said laughingly, "You won't chalk up 'Mother will be angry,' as you did when you were at Boulogne, when I used to want to speak to you." So we walked and talked over old times and people and things in general.

About the third day his manner gradually altered towards me; we had begun to know each other, and what might have been an ideal love before was now a reality. This went on for a fortnight. I trod on air.

I will pass over the next few minutes....

I would have suffered six years more for such a day, such a moment as this. All past sorrow was forgotten in it. All that has been written or said on the subject of the first kiss is trash compared to the reality. Men might as well undertake to describe Eternity. I then told him all about my six years since I first met him, and all that I had suffered.

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