that of “old” Lady Fulkeward, who has married
a very pretty young fellow of five-and-twenty, whose
dearest consideration in life is the shape of his
shirt-collar; the other, that of Denzil Murray, who
has wedded the perfectly well-born, well-bred and
virtuous, if somewhat cold-blooded, daughter of his
next-door neighbor in the Highlands. Concerning
his Egyptian experience he never speaks,—he
lives the ordinary life of the Scottish land-owner,
looking after his tenantry, considering the crops,
preserving the game, and clearing fallen timber;—and
if the glowing face of the beautiful Ziska ever floats
before his memory, it is only in a vague dream from
which he quickly rouses himself with a troubled sigh.
His sister Helen has never married. Lord Fulkeward
proposed to her but was gently rejected, whereupon
the disconsolate young nobleman took a journey to the
States and married the daughter of a millionaire oil-merchant
instead. Sir Chetwynd Lyle and his pig-faced
spouse still thrive and grow fat on the proceeds of
the Daily Dial, and there is faint hope that one of
their “girls” will wed an aspiring journalist,—a
bold adventurer who wants “a share in the paper”
somehow, even if he has to marry Muriel or Dolly in
order to get it. Ross Courtney is the only man
of the party once assembled at the Gezireh Palace
Hotel who still goes to Cairo every winter, fascinated
thither by an annually recurring dim notion that he
may “discover traces” of the lost Armand
Gervase and the Princess Ziska. And he frequently
accompanies the numerous sight-seers who season after
season drive from Cairo to the Pyramids, and take
pleasure in staring at the Sphinx with all the impertinence
common to pigmies when contemplating greatness.
But more riddles than that of the Sphinx are lost
in the depths of the sandy desert; and more unsolved
problems lie in the recesses of the past than even
the restless and inquiring spirit of modern times
will ever discover;—and if it should ever
chance that in days to come, the secret of the movable
floor of the Great Pyramid should be found, and the
lost treasures of Egypt brought to light, there will
probably be much discussion and marvel concerning
the Golden Tomb of Araxes. For the hieroglyphs
on the jewelled sarcophagus speak of him thus and
say:—
“Araxes was a Man of Might, far exceeding in
Strength and Beauty the common sons of men. Great
in War, Invincible in Love, he did Excel in Deeds
of Courage and of Conquest,—and for whatsoever
Sins he did in the secret Weakness of humanity commit,
the Gods must judge him. But in all that may
befit a Warrior, Amenhotep The King doth give him
honor,—and to the Spirits of Darkness and
of Light his Soul is here commended to its Rest.”
Thus much of the fierce dead hero of old time,—but
of the mouldering corpse that lies on the golden floor
of the same tomb, its skeleton hand touching, almost
grasping, the sword of Araxes, what shall be said?
Nothing—since the Old and the New, the Past
and the Present, are but as one moment in the countings
of eternity, and even with a late repentance Love
pardons all.
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