On Sunday, the 15th of November, we lost some friends. Captain Nevill and his wife, _née_ Lever, sailed for India, having had an offer to command the Nizam's troops in Hyderabad (Deccan), where they have now been eighteen years, and have risen to a great position there. I had now (November 20th) finished writing my "Inner Life of Syria," 2 vols., which occupied me sixteen months, and on Christmas Eve handed my manuscripts over to the publisher. It came round to end of 1874. This month Richard went to have some teeth out by gas, but the gas did not have any effect on him at all. Believing that they were playing a trick, and that there was no gas in it, it was tried on me, and I went off directly. [Sidenote: _My Arab Girl goes Home to be married_.] Richard now proposed a thing which disconcerted me considerably, and that was to send me to England to transact some business for him, and to bring out books, and I was to start with several pages of directions, and he would join me later on. I had only been two years in Trieste, and it made me exceedingly miserable; but whenever he put his foot down, I had to do it, whether I would or no. I was getting very unhappy about my poor little Arab maid; she had been very much petted and spoiled; she was getting quite beyond my orders, and would only do what she fancied. It was not easy to marry her in Europe, so that I felt her life would be thrown away. I therefore wrote to her father, to tell him that we proposed to send her home under the charge of the captain and the stewardess of the first ship direct to Beyrout, and that he should meet her, and that he should try and marry her to some of her own people if possible. I told her she had often reproached me with not being able to give her a holiday; that England had disagreed with her so much before, I was afraid to take her back, and that she had better profit of my visit to England to go and see her parents. She liked very much the idea of going to show all her fine clothes and pretty things, and a good sum of money I had saved for her, and she started off with nine boxes full, and a purse full of gold, and before long I heard to my great relief that she had married one of her own people, and was settled down in the Buká'a. It was nevertheless a great wrench to part with her, and we always keep up our affection and correspond in broken Arabic and broken English.