Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/676

638 to work and do good—if we are destined to live. (2) That if it be God's will, and not bad for us, we may get a comfortable independence, without working any more for our bread, and independent of any master save God."

Isabel returned to Trieste when her retreat was concluded; and soon after—much sooner than she expected—her husband returned to her.

When he reached Ghazzeh, Burton found Sir Charles Warren already in the field, and he did not want to be interfered with, so that Burton came home again and spent Christmas with his wife at Trieste. Thus ended 1882. Isabel notes: "After this year misfortunes began to come upon us all, and we have never had another like it."

Early next year the Burtons left their flat in Trieste, where they had been for over ten years. Something went wrong with the drainage for one thing, and Barton took an intense dislike to it for another; and when he took a dislike to a house nothing would ever induce him to remain in it. The only thing to do was to move. They looked all over Trieste in search of something suitable, and only saw one house that would do for them, and that was a palazzo, which then seemed quite beyond their means; yet six months later they got into it. It was a large house in a large garden on a wooded eminence looking out to the sea. It had been built in the palmy days of Trieste by an English merchant prince, and was one of the best houses in the place. It had a good entrance, so wide that it would have been possible to drive a