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Within the ball-room the tide of gayety was rising to its height. It may be a very trivial matter, yet it is certain that fancy dress gives a peculiar charm, freedom, and brightness to festivities of the kind; and men who in the ordinary mournful black evening-suit would be taciturn of speech and conventional in bearing, throw off their customary reserve when they find themselves in the brilliant and becoming attire of some picturesque period when dress was an art as well as a fashion; and not only do they look their best, but they somehow manage to put on "manner" with costume, and to become courteous, witty, and graceful to a degree that sometimes causes their own relatives to wonder at them and speculate as to why they have grown so suddenly interesting. Few have read Sartor Resartus with either comprehension or profit, and are therefore unaware, as Teufelsdrockh was, that "Society is founded upon Cloth"—i.e. that man does adapt his manners very much to suit his clothes; and that as the costume of the days of Louis Quinze or Louis Seize inspired graceful deportment and studied courtesy to women, so does the costume of our nineteenth century inspire brusque demeanor and curt forms of speech, which, however sincere, are not flattering to the fair sex.
More love-making goes on at a fancy-dress ball than at an ordinary one; and numerous were the couples that strolled through the corridors and along the terraces of the Gezireh Palace Hotel when, after the first dozen dances were ended, it was discovered that one of the most glorious of full moons had risen over the turrets and minarets of Cairo, illumining every visible object with as clear a lustre as that of day. Then it was that warriors and nobles of mediaeval days were seen strolling with mythological goddesses and out-of-date peasants of Italy and Spain; then audacious "toreadors" were perceived whispering in the ears of crowned queens, and clowns were caught lingering amorously by the side of impossible flower-girls of all nations. Then it was that Sir Chetwynd Lyle, with his paunch discreetly restrained within the limits of a Windsor uniform which had been made for him some two or three years since, paced up and down complacently in the moonlight, watching his two "girls," Muriel and Dolly, doing business with certain "eligibles"; then it was that Lady Fulkeward, fearfully and wonderfully got up as the "Duchess of Gainsborough" sidled to and fro, flirted with this man, flouted that, giggled, shrugged her shoulders, waved her fan, and comported herself altogether as if she were a hoyden of seventeen just let loose from school for the holidays. And then the worthy Dr. Maxwell Dean, somewhat exhausted by vigorous capering in the "Lancers," strolled forth to inhale the air, fanning himself with his cap as he walked, and listening keenly to every chance word or sentence he could hear, whether it concerned himself or not. He had peculiar theories, and one of them was, as he would tell you, that if you overheard a remark apparently not intended for you, you were to make yourself quite easy, as it was "a point of predestination" that you should at that particular moment, consciously or unconsciously, play the eavesdropper. The reason of it would, he always averred, be explained to you later on in your career. The well-known saying "listeners never hear any good of themselves" was, he declared, a most ridiculous aphorism. "You overhear persons talking and you listen. Very well. It may chance that you hear yourself abused. What then? Nothing can be so good for you as such abuse; the instruction given is twofold; it warns you against foes whom you have perhaps considered friends, and it tones down any overweening conceit you may have had concerning your own importance or ability. Listen to everything if you are wise—I always do. I am an old and practised listener. And I have never listened in vain. All the information I have gained through listening, though apparently at first disconnected and unclassified, has fitted into my work like the stray pieces of a puzzle, and has proved eminently useful. Wherever I am I always keep my ears well open."
With such views as he thus entertained, life was always enormously interesting to Dr. Dean—he found nothing tiresome, not even the conversation of the type known as Noodle. The Noodle was as curious a specimen of nature to him as the emu or the crocodile. And as he turned up his intellectual little physiognomy to the deep, warm Egyptian sky and inhaled the air sniffingly, as though it were a monster scent-bottle just uncorked for his special gratification, he smiled as he observed Muriel Chetwynd Lyle standing entirely alone at the end of the terrace, attired as a "Boulogne fish-wife," and looking daggers after the hastily-retreating figure of a "White Hussar,"—no other than Ross Courtney.
"How extremely droll a 'Boulogne fish-wife' looks in Egypt," commented the Doctor to his inward self. "Remarkable! The incongruity is peculiarly typical of the Chetwynd Lyles. The costume of the young woman is like the knighthood of her father—droll, droll, very droll!" Aloud he said—"Why are you not dancing, Miss Muriel?"
"Oh, I don't know—I'm tired," she said, petulantly. "Besides, all the men are after that Ziska woman—they seem to have lost their heads about her!"
"Ah!" and Dr. Dean rubbed his hands. "Yes—possibly! Well, she is certainly very beautiful."
"I cannot see it!" and Muriel Chetwynd Lyle flushed with the inward rage which could not be spoken. "It's the way she dresses more than her looks. Nobody knows who she is—but they do not seem to care about that. They are all raving like lunatics over her, and that man—that artist who arrived here to-day, Armand Gervase—seems the maddest of the lot. Haven't you noticed how often he has danced with her?"
"I couldn't help noticing that," said the Doctor, emphatically, "for I have never seen anything more exquisite than the way they waltz together. Physically, they seem made for one another."
Muriel laughed disdainfully.
"You had better tell Mr. Denzil Murray that; he is in a bad enough humor now, and that remark of yours wouldn't improve it, I can tell you!"
She broke off abruptly, as a slim, fair girl, dressed as a Greek vestal in white, with a chaplet of silver myrtle-leaves round her hair, suddenly approached and touched Dr. Dean on the arm.
"Can I speak to you a moment?" she asked.
"My dear Miss Murray! Of course!" and the Doctor turned to her at once.
"What is it?"
She paced with him a few steps in silence, while Muriel Chetwynd Lyle moved languidly away from the terrace and re-entered the ball-room.
"What is it?" repeated Dr. Dean. "You seem distressed; come, tell me all about it!"
Helen Murray lifted her eyes—the soft, violet-gray eyes that Lord Fulkeward had said he admired—suffused with tears, and fixed them on the old man's face.
"I wish," she said—"I wish we had never come to Egypt! I feel as if some great misfortune were going to happen to us; I do, indeed! Oh, Dr. Dean, have you watched my brother this evening?"
"I have," he replied, and then was silent.
"And what do you think?" she asked anxiously. "How can you account for his strangeness—his roughness—even to me?"
And the tears brimmed over and fell, despite her efforts to restrain them. Dr. Dean stopped in his walk and took her two hands in his own.
"My dear Helen, it's no use worrying yourself like this," he said. "Nothing can stop the progress of the Inevitable. I have watched Denzil, I have watched the new arrival, Armand Gervase, I have watched the mysterious Ziska, and I have watched you! Well, what is the result? The Inevitable—simply the unconquerable Inevitable. Denzil is in love, Gervase is in love, everybody is in love, except me and one other! It is a whole network of mischief, and I am the unhappy fly that has unconsciously fallen into the very middle of it. But the spider, my dear—the spider who wove the web in the first instance—is the Princess Ziska, and she is NOT in love! She is the other one. She is not in love with anybody any more than I am. She's got something else on her mind—I don't know what it is exactly, but it isn't love. Excluding her and myself, the whole hotel is in love—YOU are in love!"
Helen withdrew her hands from his grasp and a deep flush reddened her fair face.
"I!" she stammered—"Dr. Dean, you are mistaken. … "
"Dr. Dean was never mistaken on love-matters in his life," said that self-satisfied sage complacently. "Now, my dear, don't be offended. I have known both you and your brother ever since you were left little orphan children together; if I cannot speak plainly to you, who can? You are in love, little Helen—and very unwisely, too—with the man Gervase. I have heard of him often, but I never saw him before to-night. And I don't approve of him."
Helen grew as pale as she had been rosy, and her face as the moonlight fell upon it was very sorrowful.
"He stayed with us in Scotland two summers ago," she said softly. "He was very agreeable … "
"Ha! No doubt! He made a sort of love to you then, I suppose. I can imagine him doing it very well! There is a nice romantic glen near your house—just where the river runs, and where I caught a fifteen-pound salmon some five years ago. Ha! Catching salmon is healthy work; much better than falling in love. No, no, Helen! Gervase is not good enough for you; you want a far better man. Has he spoken to you to-night?"
"Oh, yes! And he has danced with me."
"Ha! How often?"
"Once."
"And how many times with the Princess Ziska?"
Helen's fair head drooped, and she answered nothing. All at once the little Doctor's hand closed on her arm with a soft yet firm grip.
"Look!" he whispered.
She raised her eyes and saw two figures step out on the terrace and stand in the full moonlight—the white Bedouin dress of the one and the glittering golden robe of the other made them easily recognizable—they were Gervase and the Princess Ziska. Helen gave a faint, quick sigh.
"Let us go in," she said.
"Nonsense! Why should we go in? On the contrary, let us join them."
"Oh, no!" and Helen shrank visibly at the very idea. "I cannot; do not ask me! I have tried—you know I have tried—to like the Princess; but something in her—I don't know what it is—repels me. To speak truthfully, I think I am afraid of her."
"Afraid! Pooh! Why should you be afraid? It is true one doesn't often see a woman with the eyes of a vampire-bat; but there is nothing to be frightened about. I have dissected the eyes of a vampire-bat—very interesting work, very. The Princess has them—only, of course, hers are larger and finer; but there is exactly the same expression in them. I am fond of study, you know; I am studying her. What! Are you determined to run away?"
"I am engaged for this dance to Mr. Courtney," said Helen, nervously.
"Well, well! We'll resume our conversation another time," and Dr. Dean took her hand and patted it pleasantly. "Don't fret yourself about Denzil; he'll be all right. And take my advice: don't marry a Bedouin chief; marry an honest, straightforward, tender-hearted Englishman who'll take care of you, not a nondescript savage who'll desert you!"
And with a humorous and kindly smile, Dr. Dean moved off to join the two motionless and picturesque figures that stood side by side looking at the moon, while Helen, like a frightened bird suddenly released, fled precipitately back to the ball-room, where Ross Courtney was already searching for her as his partner in the next waltz.
"Upon my word," mused the Doctor, "this is a very pretty kettle of fish! The Gezireh Palace Hotel is not a hotel at all, it seems to me; it is a lunatic asylum. What with Lady Fulkeward getting herself up as twenty at the age of sixty; and Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle man-hunting with more ferocity than sportsmen hunt tigers; Helen in love, Denzil in love, Gervase in love—dear me! dear me! What a list of subjects for a student's consideration! And the Princess Ziska … "
He broke off his meditations abruptly, vaguely impressed by the strange solemnity of the night. An equal solemnity seemed to surround the two figures to which he now drew nigh, and as the Princess Ziska turned her eyes upon him as he came, he was, to his own vexation, aware that something indefinable disturbed his usual equanimity and gave him an unpleasant thrill.
"You are enjoying a moonlight stroll, Doctor?" she inquired.
Her veil was now cast aside in a careless fold of soft drapery over her shoulders, and her face in its ethereal delicacy of feature and brilliant coloring looked almost too beautiful to be human. Dr. Dean did not reply for a moment; he was thinking what a singular resemblance there was between Armand Gervase and one of the figures on a certain Egyptian fresco in the British Museum.
"Enjoying—er—er—a what?—a moonlight stroll? Exactly—er—yes! Pardon me, Princess, my mind often wanders, and I am afraid I am getting a little deaf as well. Yes, I find the night singularly conducive to meditation; one cannot be in a land like this under a sky like this"—and he pointed to the shining heaven—"without recalling the great histories of the past."
"I daresay they were very much like the histories of the present," said
Gervase smiling.
"I should doubt that. History is what man makes it; and the character of man in the early days of civilization was, I think, more forceful, more earnest, more strong of purpose, more bent on great achievements."
"The principal achievement and glory being to kill as many of one's fellow-creatures as possible!" laughed Gervase—"Like the famous warrior, Araxes, of whom the Princess has just been telling me!"
"Araxes was great, but now Araxes is a forgotten hero," said the Princess slowly, each accent of her dulcet voice chiming on the ear like the stroke of a small silver bell. "None of the modern discoverers know anything about him yet. They have not even found his tomb; but he was buried in the Pyramids with all the honors of a king. No doubt your clever men will excavate him some day."
"I think the Pyramids have been very thoroughly explored," said Dr.
Dean. "Nothing of any importance remains in them now."
The Princess arched her lovely eyebrows.
"No? Ah! I daresay you know them better than I do!" and she laughed, a laugh which was not mirthful so much as scornful.
"I am very much interested in Araxes," said Gervase then, "partly, I suppose, because he is as yet in the happy condition of being an interred mummy. Nobody has dug him up, unwound his cerements, or photographed him, and his ornaments have not been stolen. And in the second place I am interested in him because it appears he was in love with the famous dancer of his day whom the Princess represents to-night—Charmazel. I wish I had heard the story before I came to Cairo; I would have got myself up as Araxes in person to-night."
"In order to play the lover of Charmazel?" queried the Doctor.
"Exactly!" replied Gervase with flashing eyes; "I daresay I could have acted the part."
"I should imagine you could act any part," replied the Doctor, blandly.
"The role of love-making comes easily to most men."
The Princess looked at him as he spoke and smiled. The jewelled scarab, set as a brooch on her bosom, flashed luridly in the moon, and in her black eyes there was a similar lurid gleam.
"Come and talk to me," she said, laying her hand on his arm; "I am tired, and the conversation of one's ball-room partners is very banal. Monsieur Gervase would like me to dance all night, I imagine; but I am too lazy. I leave such energy to Lady Fulkeward and to all the English misses and madams. I love indolence."
"Most Russian women do, I think," observed the Doctor.
She laughed.
"But I am not Russian!"
"I know. I never thought you were," he returned composedly; "but everyone in the hotel has come to the conclusion that you are!"
"They are all wrong! What can I do to put them right?" she inquired with a fascinating little upward movement of her eyebrows.
"Nothing! Leave them in their ignorance. I shall not enlighten them, though I know your nationality."
"You do?" and a curious shadow darkened her features. "But perhaps you are wrong also!"
"I think not," said the Doctor, with gentle obstinacy. "You are an
Egyptian. Born in Egypt; born OF Egypt. Pure Eastern! There is nothing
Western about you. Is not it so?"
She looked at him enigmatically.
"You have made a near guess," she replied; "but you are not absolutely correct. Originally, I am of Egypt."
Dr. Dean nodded pleasantly.
"Originally—yes. That is precisely what I mean—originally! Let me take you in to supper."
He offered his arm, but Gervase made a hasty step forward.
"Princess," he began—
She waved him off lightly.
"My dear Monsieur Gervase, we are not in the desert, where Bedouin chiefs do just as they like. We are in a modern hotel in Cairo, and all the good English mammas will be dreadfully shocked if I am seen too much with you. I have danced with you five times, remember! And I will dance with you once more before I leave. When our waltz begins, come and find me in the upper-room."
She moved away on Dr. Dean's arm, and Gervase moodily drew back and let her pass. When she had gone, he lit a cigarette and walked impatiently up and down the terrace, a heavy frown wrinkling his brows. The shadow of a man suddenly darkened the moonlight in front of him, and Denzil Murray's hand fell on his shoulder.
"Gervase," he said, huskily, "I must speak to you."
Gervase glanced him up and down, taking note of his pale face and wild eyes with a certain good-humored regret and compassion.
"Say on, my friend."
Denzil looked straight at him, biting his lips hard and clenching his hands in the effort to keep down some evidently violent emotion.
"The Princess Ziska," he began—
Gervase smiled, and flicked the ash off his cigarette.
"The Princess Ziska," he echoed—"Yes? What of her? She seems to be the only person talked about in Cairo. Everybody in this hotel, at any rate, begins conversation with precisely the same words as you do—'the Princess Ziska!' Upon my life, it is very amusing!"
"It is not amusing to me," said Denzil, bitterly. "To me it is a matter of life and death." He paused, and Gervase looked at him curiously. "We've always been such good friends, Gervase," he continued, "that I should be sorry if anything came between us now, so I think it is better to make a clean breast of it and speak out plainly." Again he hesitated, his face growing still paler, then with a sudden ardent light glowing in his eyes he said—"Gervase, I love the Princess Ziska!"
Gervase threw away his cigarette and laughed aloud with a wild hilarity.
"My good boy, I am very sorry for you! Sorry, too, for myself! I
deplore the position in which we are placed with all my heart and soul.
It is unfortunate, but it seems inevitable. You love the Princess
Ziska—and by all the gods of Egypt and Christendom, so do I!"
Next day the ordinary course of things was resumed at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, and the delights and flirtations of the fancy-ball began to vanish into what Hans Breitmann calls "the ewigkeit". Men were lazier than usual and came down later to breakfast, and girls looked worn and haggard with over-much dancing, but otherwise there was no sign to indicate that the festivity of the past evening had left "tracks behind," or made a lasting impression of importance on any human life. Lady Chetwynd Lyle, portly and pig-faced, sat on the terrace working at an elaborate piece of cross-stitch, talking scandal in the civilest tone imaginable, and damning all her "dear friends" with that peculiar air of entire politeness and good breeding which distinguishes certain ladies when they are saying nasty things about one another. Her daughters, Muriel and Dolly, sat dutifully near her, one reading the Daily Dial, as befitted the offspring of the editor and proprietor thereof, the other knitting. Lord Fulkeward lounged on the balustrade close by, and his lovely mother, attired in quite a charming and girlish costume of white foulard exquisitely cut and fitting into a waist not measuring more than twenty-two inches, reclined in a long deck-chair, looking the very pink of painted and powdered perfection.
"You are so very lenient," Lady Chetwynd Lyle was saying, as she bent over her needlework. "So very lenient, my dear Lady Fulkeward, that I am afraid you do not read people's characters as correctly as I do. I have had, owing to my husband's position in journalism, a great deal of social experience, and I assure you I do NOT think the Princess Ziska a safe person. She may be perfectly proper—she MAY be—but she is not the style we are accustomed to in London."
"I should rather think not!" interrupted Lord Fulkeward, hastily. "By Jove! She wouldn't have a hair left on her head in London, don'cher know!"
"What do you mean?" inquired Muriel Chetwynd Lyle, simpering. "You really do say such funny things, Lord Fulkeward!"
"Do I?" and the young nobleman was so alarmed and embarrassed at the very idea of his ever saying funny things that he was rendered quite speechless for a moment. Anon he took heart and resumed: "Er—well—I mean that the society women would tear her to bits in no time. She'd get asked nowhere, but she'd get blackguarded everywhere; she couldn't help herself with that face and those eyes."
His mother laughed.
"Dear Fulke! You are such a naughty boy! You shouldn't make such remarks before Lady Lyle. She never says anything against anyone!"
"Dear Fulke" stared. Had he given vent to his feelings he would have exclaimed: "Oh, Lord!—isn't the old lady a deep one!" But as it was he attended to his young moustache anxiously and remained silent. Lady Chetwynd Lyle meanwhile flushed with annoyance; she felt that Lady Fulkeward's remark was sarcastic, but she could not very well resent it, seeing that Lady Fulkeward was a peeress of the realm, and that she herself, by the strict laws of heraldry, was truly only "Dame" Chetwynd Lyle, as wife of an ordinary knight, and had no business to be called "her ladyship" at all.
"I should, indeed, be sorry," she said, primly, "if I were mistaken in my private estimate of the Princess Ziska's character, but I must believe my own eyes and the evidence of my own senses, and surely no one can condone the extremely fast way in which she behaved with that new man—that French artist, Armand Gervase—last night. Why, she danced six times with him! And she actually allowed him to walk home with her through the streets of Cairo! They went off together, in their fancy dresses, just as they were! I never heard of such a thing!"
"Oh, there was nothing remarkable at all in that," said Lord Fulkeward. "Everybody went about the place in fancy costume last night. I went out in my Neapolitan dress with a girl, and I met Denzil Murray coming down a street just behind here—took him for a Florentine prince, upon my word! And I bet you Gervase never got beyond the door of the Princess's palace; for that blessed old Nubian she keeps—the chap with a face like a mummy—bangs the gate in everybody's face, and says in guttural French: 'La Princesse ne voit per-r-r-sonne!' I've tried it. I tell you it's no go!"
"Well, we shall all get inside the mysterious palace next Wednesday evening," said Lady Fulkeward, closing her eyes with a graceful air of languor, "It will be charming, I am sure, and I daresay we shall find that there is no mystery at all about it."
"Two months ago," suddenly said a smooth voice behind them, "the
Ziska's house or palace was uninhabited."
Lady Fulkeward gave a little scream and looked round.
"Good gracious, Dr. Dean! How you frightened me!"
The Doctor made an apologetic bow.
"I am very sorry. I forgot you were so sensitive; pray pardon me! As I was saying, two months ago the palace of the Princess Ziska was a deserted barrack. Formerly, so I hear, it used to be the house of some great personage; but it had been allowed to fall into decay, and nobody would rent it, even for the rush of the Cairene season, till it was secured by the Nubian you were speaking of just now—the interesting Nubian with the face like a mummy; he took it and furnished it, and when it was ready Madame la Princesse appeared on the scene and has resided there every since."
"I wonder what that Nubian has to do with her?" said Lady Chetwynd
Lyle, severely.
"Nothing at all," replied the Doctor, calmly. "He is the merest servant—the kind of person who is 'told off' to attend on the women of a harem."
"Ah, I see you have been making inquiries concerning the princess,
Doctor," said Lady Fulkeward, with a smile.
"I have."
"And have you found out anything about her?"
"No; that is, nothing of social importance, except, perhaps, two items—first, that she is not a Russian; secondly, that she has never been married."
"Never been married!" exclaimed Lady Chetwynd Lyle, then suddenly turning to her daughters she said blandly: "Muriel, Dolly, go into the house, my dears. It is getting rather warm for you on this terrace. I will join you in a few minutes."
The "girls" rose obediently with a delightfully innocent and juvenile air, and fortunately for them did not notice the irreverent smile that played on young Lord Fulkeward's face, which was immediately reflected on the artistically tinted countenance of his mother, at the manner of their dismissal.
"There is surely nothing improper in never having been married," said Dr. Dean, with a mock serious air. "Consider, my dear Lady Lyle, is there not something very chaste and beautiful in the aspect of an old maid?"
Lady Lyle looked up sharply. She had an idea that both she and her daughters were being quizzed, and she had some difficulty to control her rising temper.
"Then do you call the Princess an old maid?" she demanded.
Lady Fulkeward looked amused; her son laughed outright. But the
Doctor's face was perfectly composed.
"I don't know what else I can call her," he said, with a thoughtful air. "She is no longer in her teens, and she has too much voluptuous charm for an ingenue. Still, I admit, you would scarcely call her 'old' except in the parlance of the modern matrimonial market. Our present-day roues, you know, prefer their victims young, and I fancy the Princess Ziska would be too old and perhaps too clever for most of them. Personally speaking, she does not impress me as being of any particular age, but as she is not married, and is, so to speak, a maid fully developed, I am perforce obliged to call her an old maid."
"She wouldn't thank you for the compliment," said Lady Lyle with a spiteful grin.
"I daresay not," responded the Doctor blandly, "but I imagine she has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with something more important than the consideration of her own good looks."
"And what is that?" inquired Lady Fulkeward, with some curiosity.
"Ah! there is the difficulty! What is it that engrosses our fair friend more than the looking-glass? I should like to know—but I cannot find out. It is an enigma as profound as that of the sphinx. Good-morning, Monsieur Gervase!"—and, turning round, he addressed the artist, who just then stepped out on the terrace carrying a paintbox and a large canvas strapped together in portable form. "Are you going to sketch some picturesque corner of the city?"
"No," replied Gervase, listlessly raising his white sun-hat to the ladies present with a courteous, yet somewhat indifferent grace. "I'm going to the Princess Ziska's. I shall probably get the whole outline of her features this morning."
"A full-length portrait?" inquired the Doctor.
"I fancy not. Not the first attempt, at any rate—head and shoulders only."
"Do you know where her house is?" asked Lord Fulkeward. "If you don't,
I'll walk with you and show you the way."
"Thanks—you are very good. I shall be obliged to you."
And raising his hat again he sauntered slowly off, young Fulkeward walking with him and chatting to him with more animation than that exhausted and somewhat vacant-minded aristocrat usually showed to anyone.
"It is exceedingly warm," said Lady Lyle, rising then and putting away her cross-stitch apparatus, "I thought of driving to the Pyramids this afternoon, but really … "
"There is shade all the way," suggested the Doctor, "I said as much to a young woman this morning who has been in the hotel for nearly two months, and hasn't seen the Pyramids yet."
"What has she been doing with herself?" asked Lady Fulkeward, smiling.
"Dancing with officers," said Dr. Dean. "How can Cheops compare with a moustached noodle in military uniform! Good-bye for the present; I'm going to hunt for scarabei."
"I thought you had such a collection of them already," said Lady Lyle.
"So I have. But the Princess had a remarkable one on last night, and I want to find another like it. It's blue—very blue—almost like a rare turquoise, and it appears it is the sign-manual of the warrior Araxes, who was a kind of king in his way, or desert chief, which was about the same thing in those days. He fought for Amenhotep, and seemed from all accounts to be a greater man than Amenhotep himself. The Princess Ziska is a wonderful Egyptologist; I had a most interesting conversation with her last night in the supper-room."
"Then she is really a woman of culture and intelligence?" queried Lady
Lyle.
The Doctor smiled.
"I should say she would be a great deal too much for the University of
Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes," he said. "She can read the
Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can decipher anything on any of
the monuments. I only wish I could persuade her to accompany me to
Thebes and Karnak."
Lady Fulkeward unfurled her fan and swayed it to and fro with an elegant languor.
"How delightful that would be!" she sighed. "So romantic and solemn—all those dear old cities with those marvellous figures of the Egyptians carved and painted on the stones! And Rameses—dear Rameses! He really has good legs everywhere! Haven't you noticed that? So many of these ancient sculptures represent the Egyptians with such angular bodies and such frightfully thin legs, but Rameses always has good legs wherever you find him. It's so refreshing! DO make up a party, Dr. Dean!—we'll all go with you; and I'm sure the Princess Ziska will be the most charming companion possible. Let us have a dahabeah! I'm good for half the expenses, if you will only arrange everything."
The Doctor stroked his chin and looked dubious, but he was evidently attracted by the idea.
"I'll see about it," he said at last. "Meanwhile I'll go and have a hunt for some traces of Amenhotep and Araxes."
He strolled down the terrace, and Lady Chetwynd Lyle, turning her back on "old" Lady Fulkeward, went after her "girls," while the fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not be a "half bad" arrangement for him. So he determined to do the agreeable, and as he was a perfect adept in the art of making love without feeling it, he got on very well, and his prospects brightened steadily hour by hour.
Meanwhile young Fulkeward was escorting Armand Gervase through several narrow by-streets, talking to him as well as he knew how and trying in his feeble way to "draw him out," in which task he met with but indifferent success.
"It must be awfully jolly and—er—all that sort of thing to be so famous," he observed, glancing up at the strong, dark, brooding face above him. "They had a picture of yours over in London once; I went to see it with my mother. It was called 'Le Poignard,' do you remember it?"
Gervase shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
"Yes, I remember. A poor thing at its best. It was a woman with a dagger in her hand."
"Yes, awfully fine, don'cher know! She was a very dark woman—too dark for my taste—and she'd got a poignard clasped in in her right hand. Of course, she was going to murder somebody with it; that was plain enough. You meant it so, didn't you?"
"I suppose I did."
"She was in a sort of Eastern get-up," pursued Fulkeward, "one of your former studies in Egypt, perhaps."
Gervase started, and passed his hand across his forehead with a bewildered air.
"No, no! Not a former study, by any means. How could it be? This is my first visit to Egypt. I have never been here before."