Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/388

354 Burton's leave was now running short, and the time was drawing near when he was due at Damascus. He decided to go to Vichy and take a month's course of the waters, and then proceed viâ Brindisi to Damascus. His wife was to come out to Damascus later. At Boulogne therefore they parted; he went to Vichy, and she was to return to London and carry out the usual plan of "pay, pack, and follow."

Isabel went round by way of Paris, and then she began to feel unhappy at being separated from her husband, and to want to join him at Vichy. "I did not see why I could not have the month there with him, and make up double-quick time after." So instead of returning to London, she started off for Vichy, and spent the month there with her husband. Algernon Swinburne and Frederick Leighton (both great friends of the Burtons) were there also, and they made many excursions together. When Burton's "cure" was at an end, his wife accompanied him as far as Turin. Here they parted, he going to catch the P. & O. at Brindisi, en route for Damascus, and she returning to London to arrange and settle everything for a long sojourn in the East.

She was in England for some weeks (the autumn of 1869), and up to her eyes in work. She had to see a great many publishers for one thing, and for another she was busy in every way preparing herself for Damascus. She went down to Essex to see the tube-wells worked, and mastered the detail of them, as Burton was anxious, if possible, to produce water in the desert. She also took lessons in taking off wheels and