In 1845 she left Tynemouth for Ambleside in the Lake District, where she designed herself and oversaw the construction of the house called "The Knoll, Ambleside", where she spent the greater part of her later life. In 1845 she published three volumes of "Forest and Game Law Tales". In 1846, she resided with her elderly mother, Elizabeth, in Birmingham for some time, following which she then toured Egypt, Palestine and Syria with some friends. On her return she published "Eastern Life, Present and Past" (1848), in which she reports a breakthrough realization standing on a prominence looking out across the Nile and desert to the tombs of the dead, where "the deceased crossed the living valley and river" to "the caves of the death region" where Osiris the supreme judge "is to give the sign of acceptance or condemnation". Her summary: "the mortuary ideas of the primitive Egyptians, and through them, of the civilized world at large, have been originated by the everlasting conflict of the Nile and the Desert".