He arrived in England at Christmas 1860, and Miss Arundell, although her mother still frowned, now consented to the marriage. She was 30 years old, she said, and could no longer be treated as a child. Ten years had elapsed since Burton, who was now 40, had first become acquainted with her, and few courtships could have been more chequered.

"I regret that I am bringing you no money," observed Miss Arundell.

"That is not a disadvantage as far as I am concerned," replied Burton, "for heiresses always expect to lord it over their lords."—"We will have no show," he continued, "for a grand marriage ceremony is a barbarous and an indelicate exhibition." So the wedding, which took place at the Bavarian Catholic Church, Warwick Street, London, on 22nd January 1861, was all simplicity. As they left the church Mrs. Burton called to mind Gipsy Hagar, her couched eyes and her reiterated prophecy. The luncheon was spread at the house of a medical friend, Dr. Bird, 49, Welbeck Street, and in the midst of it Burton told some grisly tales of his adventures in the Nedj and Somaliland, including an account of the fight at Berbera.

"Now, Burton," interrupted Dr. Bird, "tell me how you feel when you have killed a man." To which Burton replied promptly and with a sly look, "Quite jolly, doctor! how do you?" After the luncheon Burton and his wife walked down to their lodgings in Bury Street, St. James's, where Mrs. Burton's boxes had been despatched in a four-wheeler; and from Bury Street, Burton, as soon as he could pick up a pen, wrote in his fine, delicate hand as follows to Mr. Arundell:

"My dear Father, "I have committed a highway robbery by marrying your daughter Isabel, at Warwick Street Church, 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.

"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:

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 there were generally sparks. The trouble originated partly from Mrs. Burton's impulsiveness and want of tact. She could not help dragging in her religion at all sorts of unseasonable times. She would introduce into her conversation and letters remarks that a moment's reflection would have told her could only nauseate her Protestant friends. "The Blessed Virgin," or some holy saint or other was always intruding on the text. Her head was lost in her heart. She was once in terrible distress because she had mislaid some trifle that had been touched by the Pope, though not in more distress, perhaps, than her husband would have been had he lost his sapphire talisman, and she was most careful to see that the lamps which she lighted before the images of certain saints never went out. Burton himself looked upon all this with amused complacency and observed that she was a figure stayed somehow from the Middle Ages. If the mediaeval Mrs. Burton liked to illuminate the day with lamps or camphorated tapers, that, he said, was her business; adding that the light of the sun was good enough for him. He objected at first to her going to confession, but subsequently made no further reference to the subject. Once, even, in a moment of weakness, he gave her five pounds to have masses said for her dead brother; just as one might give a child a penny to buy a top. He believed in God, and tried to do what he thought right, fair and honourable, not for the sake of reward, as he used to say, but simply because it was right, fair and honourable. Occasionally he accompanied his wife to mass, and she mentions that he always bowed his head at "Hallowed by Thy Name," which "shows," as Dr. Johnson would have commented, "that he had good principles." Mrs. Burton generally called her husband "Dick," but frequently, especially in letters, he is "The Bird," a name which he deserved, if only on account of his roving propensities. Often, however, for no reason at all, she called him "Jimmy," and she was apt in her admiration of him and pride of possession, to Dick and Jimmy it too lavishly among casual acquaintances. Indeed, the tyranny of her heart over her head will force itself upon our notice at every turn. It is pleasant to be able to state that Mrs. Burton and Burton's "dear Louisa" (Mrs. Segrave) continued to be the best of friends, and had many a hearty laugh over bygone petty jealousies. One day, after calling on Mrs. Segrave, Burton and his wife, who was dressed in unusual style, lunched with Dr. and Mrs. E. J. Burton. "Isabel looks very smart to-day," observed Mrs. E. J. Burton. "Yes," followed Burton, "she always wears her best when we go to see my dear Louisa."

Burton took a pleasure in sitting up late. "Indeed," says one of his friends, "he would talk all night in preference to going to bed, and, in the Chaucerian style, he was a brilliant conversationalist, and his laugh was like the rattle of a pebble across a frozen pond." "No man of sense," Burton used to say, "rises, except in mid-summer, before the world is brushed and broomed, aired and sunned." Later, however, he changed his mind, and for the last twenty years of his life he was a very early riser.

Among Burton's wedding gifts were two portraits—himself and his wife—in one frame, the work of Louis Desanges, the battle painter whose acquaintance he had made when a youth at Lucca. Burton appears with Atlantean shoulders, strong mouth, penthouse eyebrows, and a pair of enormous pendulous moustaches, which made him look very like a Chinaman. Now was this an accident, for his admiration of the Chinese was always intense. He regarded them as "the future race of the East," just as he regarded the Slav as the future race of Europe. Many years later he remarked of Gordon's troops, that they had shown the might that was slumbering in a nation of three hundred millions. China armed would be a colossus. Some day Russia would meet China face to face—the splendid empire of Central Asia the prize. The future might of Japan he did not foresee.

Says Lady Burton: "We had a glorious season, and took up our position in Society. Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes) was very much attached to Richard, and he settled the question of our position by asking his friend, Lord Palmerston, to give a party, and to let me be the bride of the evening, and when I arrived Lord Palmerston gave me his arm.... Lady Russell presented me at Court 'on my marriage.'" 181

Mrs. Burton's gaslight beauty made her the cynosure of all eyes.