Page:Memoirs of the Lady Hester Stanhope.djvu/292

 she at last got rid of all European servants, because they would not submit to arbitrary punishments, but would persist in raising their voices in self-justification. With the Turks it was not so. Accustomed, in the courts of governors and Pashas, to implicit obedience and submission, they resigned themselves to her rule as a matter of course. In transferring, however, their servility to her, as their mistress, they also transferred the vices and dangers which servility engenders: namely, lying, theft, sycophancy, intrigue, and treachery.

Saturday, February 17.—During the whole of this day I did not see Lady Hester, and I was not sorry for it. Her thoughts were now constantly running on the inexplicable silence of Sir Francis Burdett. "He is a man of honour," she would say. "I suppose he has to write to Ireland, and to the right and left about my property; or perhaps they have got  hold of him, too;—who knows? I am sure something must have happened." As each succeeding steamboat arrived, a messenger was sent to Beyrout, but still no answer. Then she reflected what she should do, if Sir Francis at last should furnish her with proofs that no property had been left her:—beggary stared her in the face. In the mean time she had no means of raising a single farthing before the first of March, when she could draw for £300. But of this sum £200