Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/213

 on the road, and drive him back. If anything in the shape of a consul sets his foot within my doors, I’ll have him shot; and, if nobody else will do it, I’ll do it myself. See that he sets off this very instant, and tell him to return with the letter, without stopping.”

I did so, and returned to Lady Hester. Conceiving that this letter was an answer she was expecting to one she had written to Sir Francis Burdett, about the property supposed to have been left her, her agitation and impatience rose to such a degree, that I thought she would have gone frantic, or that her violence would have ended in suffocation. She complained she could not breathe. "It’s here, it’s here," she cried in extreme agitation, taking me by the throat to show me where, and giving me such a squeeze, that now, when I am writing, twenty-four hours after, I feel it still. I tried in vain to calm her impatience. I sent off a servant on horseback to hurry the secretary back, but he did not appear, and the day, until about four o'clock, was passed in this manner.

To account for this extraordinary agitation, it must again be observed that, at the recurrence of the period of each steamboat’s arrival at Beyrout, Lady Hester anxiously expected an answer to her letter to Sir Francis Burdett; for it was on the strength of this property supposed to have been left her that she had