Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/710

672 he sat down on my hearth-rug before the fire, crosslegged, with a bit of paper and a pair of scissors, and he made me three or four Union Jacks, of which I pasted one in my journal of that day; and I never saw him again." She also writes elsewhere: "I shall never forget how kind and sympathetic he was; but he always said, 'As God has willed it, so will it be.' That was the burden of his talk: 'As God has willed it, so will it be.'"

In May Burton wrote to Lord Granville, pointing out that Riaz Pasha was undoing all Gordon's anti-slavery work, and asking for a temporary appointment as Slave Commissioner in the Soudan and Red Sea, to follow up the policy of anti-slavery which Gordon had begun. This Lord Granville refused.

Gordon went to many places—India, China, the Cape—and played many parts during the next three years; but he still continued to correspond with Isabel and her husband at intervals, though his correspondence referred mainly to private matters, and was of no public interest. In 1883 he wrote the following to Burton from Jerusalem, anent certain inquiries in which he was much interested:

June 3, 1883.

"I have a favour to ask, which I will begin with, and then go on to other subjects. In 1878 (I think) I sent you a manuscript in Arabic, copy of the