’Omar “could not leave her,” and he had his reward.  One of the last events in the life of this gifted and liberal-minded Englishwoman was the visit to her dahabeeyeh, or Nile boat, of the Prince and Princess of Wales.  Then poor Omar’s simple and faithful service to his dying mistress was rewarded in a way he could scarcely have dreamt; and Lady Duff Gordon thus relates the incident:  “Omar sends you his heartfelt thanks, and begs the boat may remain registered at the Consulate in your name, as a protection, for his use and benefit.  The Prince has appointed him his dragoman, but he is sad enough, poor fellow! all his prosperity does not console him for the loss of “the mother he found in the world.”  Mahomed at Luxor wept bitterly, and said:  “Poor I—­poor my children—­poor all the people!” and kissed my hand passionately; and the people at Esneh asked leave to touch me “for a blessing,” and everyone sent delicate bread and their best butter and vegetables and lambs.  They are kinder than ever now that I can no longer be of any use to them.  If I live till September I will go up to Esneh, where the air is softest and I cough less; I would rather die among my own people on the Saeed than here.  Can you thank the Prince for Omar, or shall I write?  He was most pleasant and kind, and the Princess too; she is the most perfectly simple-mannered girl I ever saw; she does not even try to be civil like other great people, but asks blunt questions and looks at one so heartily with her clear, honest eyes, that she must win all hearts.  They were more considerate than any people I have seen, and the Prince, instead of being gracious, was, if I may say so, quite respectful in manner:  he is very well bred and pleasant, and has, too, the honest eyes that make one sure he has a kind heart.  My sailors were so proud at having the honour of rowing him in our own boat and of singing to him.  I had a very good singer in the boat.”

’Long will her presence be remembered and wept for among the half-civilized friends of her exile, the poor, the sick, the needy and the oppressed.  She makes the gentle, half-playful boast in one of her letters from the Nile that she is “very popular,” and has made many cures as a Hakeem, or doctor, and that a Circassian had sat up with a dying Englishman because she had nursed his wife.

’The picture of the Circassian sitting up with the dying Englishman because an English lady had nursed his wife is infinitely touching, and had its parallel in the speech of an old Scottish landlady known to the writer of this notice, whose son had died in the West Indies among strangers.  “And they were so good to him,” said she, “that I vowed if ever I had a lodger sick I would do my best for that stranger in remembrance.”  In remembrance!  Who shall say what seeds of kindly intercommunion that dying Englishwoman of whom and of whose works we have been speaking may have planted in the arid Eastern soil?  Or what “bread she may have cast” on those Nile waters, “which shall be found again after many days”?  “Out of evil cometh good,” and certainly out of her sickness and suffering good came to all within her influence.