I came here on Tuesday... I have never cried nor slept since mother
died (a month to-morrow) I go up again on Monday for final pack-up--to
my convent ten days--....then back to town in hopes of Nana in August,
about the 7th. Then we shall go to Spain, and to Trieste, our new
appointment, if he [Burton] will take it, as all our friends and
relations wish, if only as a stop-gap for the present. Arundell has done
an awfully kind thing. There is a large Austrian honour in the family
with some privileges, and he has desired me to assume all the family
honours on arriving, and given me copies of the Patent, with all the old
signatures and attested by himself. This is to present to the Herald's
College at Vienna. He had desired my cards to be printed Mrs. Richard
Burton, nee Countess Isabel Arundell of Wardour of the most sacred Roman
Empire. This would give us an almost royal position at Vienna or any
part of Austria, and with Nana's own importance and fame we shall
(barring salary) cut out the Ambassador. She wants a quiet year to learn
German and finish old writings.... I should like the tour round the
world enormously, but I don't see where the money is to come from...
This is such a glorious old place... The woods and parks are splendid,
and the old ruin of the castle defended by Lady Blanche is the most
interesting thing possible. Half the other great places I go to are
mushroom greatness, but this is the real old thing of Druid remains
and the old baronial castle of knights in armour and fair Saxon-looking
women, and with heavy portcullises to enter by, and dungeons and
subterranean passages, etc. There is a statue of our Saviour over the
door, and in Cromwell's siege a cannon ball made a hole in the wall just
behind it and never took off its head. ...Your loving Zoo."

A few days later Mrs. Burton received a letter from her husband, who
expressed his willingness to accept Trieste. He arrived at Edinburgh
again on September 5th, and his presence was the signal for a grand
dinner, at which all the notables of the neighbourhood, including many
people of title, were present. But, unfortunately, Burton was in one of
his disagreeable moods, and by the time dinner was half over, he found
that he had contradicted with acerbity every person within earshot.
While, however, he was thus playing the motiveless ogre, his
brother-in-law, Sir Henry Stisted, at the other end of the table, was
doing his utmost to render himself agreeabl