“My dear Mr. Quatermain,—­Very strangely I have just seen at a meeting of the Horticultural Society, a gentleman who declares that a few days ago he sat next to you at some public dinner.  Indeed I do not think there can be any doubt for he showed me your card which he had in his purse with a Yorkshire address upon it.

“A dispute had arisen as to whether a certain variety of Crinum lily was first found in Africa, or Southern America.  This gentleman, an authority upon South American flora, made a speech saying that he had never met with it there, but that an acquaintance of his, Mr. Quatermain, to whom he had spoken on the subject, said that he had seen something of the sort in the interior of Africa.” (This was quite true for I remembered the incident.) “At the tea which followed the meeting I spoke to this gentleman whose name I never caught, and to my astonishment learnt that he must have been referring to you whom I believed to be dead, for so we were told a long time ago.  This seemed certain, for in addition to the evidence of the name, he described your personal appearance and told me that you had come to live in England.

“My dear friend, I can assure you it is long since I heard anything which rejoiced me so much.  Oh! as I write all the past comes back, flowing in upon me like a pent-up flood of water, but I trust that of this I shall soon have an opportunity of talking to you.  So let it be for a while.

“Alas! my friend, since we parted on the shores of the Red Sea, tragedy has pursued me.  As you will know, for both my husband and I wrote to you, although you did not answer the letters” (I never received them), “we reached England safely and took up our old life again, though to tell you the truth, after my African experiences things could never be quite the same to me, or for the matter of that to George either.  To a great extent he changed his pursuits and certain political ambitions which he once cherished, seemed no longer to appeal to him.  He became a student of past history and especially of Egyptology, which under all the circumstances you may think strange, as I did.  However it suited me well enough, since I also have tastes that way.  So we worked together and I can now read hieroglyphics as well as most people.  One year he said that he would like to go to Egypt again, if I were not afraid.  I answered that it had not been a very lucky place for us, but that personally I was not in the least afraid and longed to return there.  For as you know, I have, or think I have, ties with Egypt and indeed with all Africa.  Well, we went and had a very happy time, although I was always expecting to see old Harut come round the corner.

“After this it became a custom with us who, since George practically gave up shooting and attending the House of Lords, had nothing to keep us in England, to winter in Egypt.  We did this for five years in succession, living in a bungalow