Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/214

182 seeing as little of them as possible. Perhaps they thought it was Isabel who kept him away; but it was not. Fortunately it is not necessary to enter into the details of a sordid family squabble. To do so would be to weary, and not to edify.

Following the annoyance to which she was subjected by her husband's relatives came another of a different nature. There were many who heard, and some who repeated, rumours against Burton which had been circulated by Speke and others. One candid friend made it his business to retail some of these to Isabel (one to the effect that her husband was "keeping a seraglio" out at Fernando Po), and gave her a good deal of gratuitous and sympathetic advice as to how she ought to act. But Isabel refused to listen to anything against her husband, and spurned the sympathy and advice, declaring that "any one who could listen to such lying tales was no friend of hers," and she closed the acquaintance forthwith.

Despite her brave words there is no doubt that she fretted a good deal through the months that followed. Her depression was further aggravated by a sharp attack of diphtheria. One day in October, when she could bear the loneliness and separation from her husband no longer, she went down to the Foreign Office, and cried her heart out to Sir Henry (then Mr.) Layard. Her distress touched the official's heart, for he asked her to wait while he went upstairs. Presently Mr. Layard came back, saying he had got four months' leave for Burton, and had ordered the dispatch to be sent off that very afternoon. She says,