After Lady Hester's death, a visit was paid to the place which had been her residence for so many years, by Major Eliot Warburton, the accomplished author of "The Crescent and the Cross." He speaks of the buildings, that constituted the palace, as of a very scattered and complicated description, covering a wide space, but only one story in height; courts and gardens, stables and sleeping rooms, halls of audience and ladies' bowers, all strangely intermingled. Heavy weeds clambered about the open portals and a tangle of roses and jasmine blocked the way to the inner court, where the flowers no longer bloomed and the fountains had ceased to play in the marble basins. At nightfall when Major Warburton's escort had lighted their watch-fires, the lurid gleam fell strangely upon masses of honeysuckle and woodbine; on the white, mouldering walls beneath, and the dark, waving trees above; while the quaint picture seemed appropriately filled up by the group of wild mountaineers, with their long beards and vivid dresses, who gathered around the cheerful blaze. Next morning, Major Warburton explored the spacious gardens. "Here many a broken arbour and trellis bending under masses of jasmine and honeysuckle, showed the care and taste that were once lavished on this wild but beautiful hermitage: a garden-house, surrounded by an enclosure of roses run wild, stood 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."