d in the midst of a grove of myrtle and
bay trees. This was Lady Hester's favourite resort during her life-time,
and now, within its silent enclosure,

"'After life's fitful fever she sleeps well.'"

It is painful to know that in her last illness she was shamefully
deserted. Mr. Moore, the English consul at Beyrout, on hearing that she
was stricken, rode across the mountains to visit her, accompanied by Mr.
Thompson, the American missionary. It was evening when they arrived, and
silence reigned in the palace. No attendants met them. They lighted
their own lamps in the outer court, and passed unquestioned through
court and gallery until they reached the room where she lay--dead. "A
corpse was the only inhabitant of the palace, and the isolation from her
kind which she had sought so long was indeed complete. That morning,
thirty-seven servants had watched every motion of her eye; its spell
once darkened by death, every one fled with such plunder as they could
secure. A little girl, adopted by her, and maintained for years, took
her watch and some papers on which she had set peculiar value. Neither
the child nor the property was ever seen again. Not a single thing was
left in the room where she lay dead, except the ornaments upon her
person: no one had ventured to take these; even in death she seemed able
to protect herself. At midnight, her countryman and the missionary
carried her out by torchlight to a spot in the garden that had been
formerly her favourite resort, and there they buried the self-exiled
lady."

Some curious particulars of Lady Hester Stanhope's mode of life in its
closing years are recorded by her physician. She seldom rose from her
bed until between two and five in the afternoon, and seldom retired
before the same hours in the morning. It was sunset before the day's
business really began. Not that the servants were permitted to remain
idle during daylight. On the contrary, their work was assigned to them
over-night, and their mistress employed the evening hours in arranging
their occupations for the following day. When this was done, she wrote
her letters and plunged into those endless conversations which seem to
have been her sole, or, at all events, her chief pleasure. She always
showed a reluctance, an air of unwillingness, to retire; not an unusual
characteristic in persons of her peculiar temperament. When the room was
ready, one of her two girls, Zezeforn or Faloom, would precede her to
it,