It is a nest of usurpers.
"Believe me,
"Yours sincerely,
"C. G. GORDON."
A day or two after the date of this last letter Gordon returned to
London, and went several times to see Isabel, who was ill in lodgings
in Upper Montagu Street, and very anxious about her husband and the
Midian Mines. Gordon's prospects too were far from rosy at this time,
so that they were companions in misfortune. They discussed Egypt and
many things. Isabel writes: "I remember on April 15, 1880, he asked
me if I knew the origin of the Union Jack, and he sat down on my
hearth-rug before the fire, cross-legged, with a bit of paper and
a pair of scissors, and he made me three or four Union Jacks, of
which I pasted one in my journal of that day; and I never saw him
again."[10] She also writes elsewhere; "I shall never forget how
kind and sympathetic he was; but he always said, 'As God has willed
it, so will it be.'"
In May Burton wrote to Lord Granville, pointing out that Riaz Pasha was
undoing all Gordon's anti-slavery work, and asking for a temporary
appointment as Slave Commissioner in the Soudan and Red Sea, to follow
up the policy of anti-slavery which Gordon had begun. This Lord
Granville refused.
Gordon went to many places--India, China, the Cape--and played many parts
during the next three years; but he still continued to correspond with
Isabel and her husband at intervals, though his correspondence referred
mainly to private matters, and was of no public interest.
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