"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.