Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/674

636 to show that the "much-prized post "was" the poor, hard-earned, little six hundred a year, well earned by forty years' hard toil in the public service." On returning to Trieste, she entertained many friends who arrived there for the Exhibition, and after that settled down to the usual round again.

In October Barton was suddenly ordered by the Foreign Office to go to Ghazzeh in Syria in search of Professor Palmer, their old friend and travelling companion, who was lost in the desert. There was then a chance of his being still alive, though the bodies of his companions had been found. Burton's knowledge of the Bedawin and Sinai country was of course specially valuable in such a quest. He started at once.

After he had left Isabel went into retreat at the Convent della Osolini at Gorizia. The following were among her reflections at this period :

"In retreat at last. I have so long felt the want of one. My life seems to be like an express train, every day bringing fresh things which must be done. I am goaded on by time and circumstances, and God, my first beginning and last end, is always put off, thrust out of the way, to make place for the unimportant, and gets served last and badly. This cannot continue. What friend would have such long-enduring patience with me? None! Certainly less a king! far less a husband! How then: Shall God be kept waiting until nobody else wants me? How ashamed and miserable I feel! How my heart twinges at the