Page:The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton.djvu/713

Rh "With kind regards to Mrs. Burton and you, and the hope you will send me the manuscript, "Believe me, "Yours sincerely,

"P.S.—Did you ever get the £1,000 I offered you on part of ex-Khedive for the Mines of Midian?"

Some six months after the date of this letter Gordon left England for the Soudan, and later went to Kartoum, with what result all the world knows. Burton said, when the Government sent Gordon to Kartoum, they failed because they sent him alone. Had they sent him with five hundred soldiers there would have been no war. It was just possible at the time that Burton might have been sent instead of Gordon; and Isabel, dreading this, wrote privately to the Foreign Office, unknown to her husband, to let them know how ill he then was.

The Burtons were profoundly moved at the death of Gordon; they both felt it with a keen sense of personal loss. Isabel relates that in one of the illustrated papers there was a picture of Gordon lying in the desert, his Bible in one hand, his revolver in the other, and the vultures hovering around. Burton said, "Take it away! I can't bear to look at it. I have had to feel that myself; I know what it is." But upon reflection Burton grew to disbelieve in Gordon's death, and he died believing that he had escaped into the desert, but disgusted at his betrayal and abandonment he would never let himself be discovered or show himself in