" They varied their life by many journeys and
excursions. Their happy hunting-ground was Venice. Whenever they could
they would cross over there, order a gondola, and float lazily about the
canals. She says of this time: "We lived absolutely the jolly life of
two bachelors, as it might be an elder or a younger brother. When we
wanted to go away, we just turned the key and left."
It was not until they had been at Trieste six months that they settled
down in a house, or rather in a flat at the top of a large building
close to the sea. They began their housekeeping with very modest ideas;
in fact, they had only six rooms. But Burton and his wife were fond
of enlarging their boundaries, and in course of time these six rooms
grew until they ran round the whole of the large block of the building.
Here they lived for ten years, and then they moved to the most beautiful
house in Trieste, a palazzo a little way out of the town.
One of their first expeditions was to Loretto. Thence they went to
Rome, where they made the acquaintance of the English Ambassador to
the Austrian Court and his wife, Sir Augustus and Lady Paget, with whom
they remained great friends all the time they were at Trieste. Isabel
also met Cardinal Howard, who was a cousin of hers. He was one of her
favourite partners in the palmy days of Almack's, when he was an officer
in the Guards and she was a girl. Now the whirligig of time had
transformed him into a cardinal and her into the wife of the British
Consul at Trieste.
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