and before the Registrar--the
details she is writing to her mother. "It only remains to me to say that
I have no ties or liaisons of any sort, that the marriage is perfectly
legal and respectable. I want no money with Isabel: I can work, and it
will be my care that Time shall bring you nothing to regret.

"I am
"Yours sincerely,
"Richard F. Burton."

"There is one thing," said Burton to his wife, "I cannot do, and that
is, face congratulations, so, if you are agreeable, we will pretend that
we have been married some months." Such matters, however, are not easy
to conceal, and the news leaked out. "I am surprised," said his cousin,
Dr. Edward J. Burton, to him a few days later, "to find that you are
married." "I am myself even more surprised than you," was the reply.
"Isabel is a strong-willed woman. She was determined to have her way and
she's got it."

With Mr. Arundell, Burton speedily became a prime favourite, and his
attitude towards his daughter was Metastasio's:

"Yes, love him, love him,
He is deserving even of such infinite bliss;"

but Mrs. Arundell, poor lady, found it hard to conquer her prejudice.
Only a few weeks before her death she was heard to exclaim, "Dick Burton
is no relation of mine." Let us charitably assume, however, that it was
only in a moment of irritation. Isabel Burton, though of larger build
than most women, was still a dream of beauty; and her joy in finding
herself united to the man she loved gave her a new radiance. Her beauty,
however, was of a rather coarse grain, and even those most attached to
her remarked in her a certain lack of refinement. She was a goddess at a
little distance.

Her admiration of her husband approached worship. She says, "I used to
like to sit and look at him; and to think 'You are mine, and there is
no man on earth the least like you.'" Their married life was not without
its jars, but a more devoted wife Burton could not have found; and he,
though certainly in his own fashion, was sincerely and continuously
attached to her. If the difference in their religious opinions sometimes
led to amusing skirmishes, it was, on the other hand, never allowed to
be a serious difficulty. The religious question, however, often
made unpleasantness between Mrs. Burton and Lady Stisted and her
daughters--who were staunch Protestants of the Georgian and unyielding
school. When the old English Catholic and the old English Protestant
met the