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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.
We drove rapidly through the streets and the outskirts of the town, where old houses are being pulled down and new ones rapidly built up, and where a general air of new bricks and old rubbish pervades the scene. Then we crossed the Nile by a handsome iron bridge, and saw the Palace of Gezireh, where the Prince of Wales and his suite were lodged.
This is very excellent coffee" here he peered into the fresh pot of the fragrant beverage just set before him. "They make it better here than at the Gezireh Palace. Well, Denzil, my boy, when you get into Cairo, give my love to Helen and tell her we'll all go home to the old country together; I, myself, have got quite enough out of Egypt this time to satisfy my fondness for new experiences.
A favorite resort of the Cairo folk is the island of Gezireh; here a long avenue of lebbek trees furnishes a fashionable promenade, while games of golf, tennis, cricket, and polo, together with the races, are a constant source of attraction. The time of our stay was drawing to a close, and Cairo was again to become "memory" with a past stretching back into centuries without number.
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.
"Have you been out to the Gezireh Palace?" she very innocently inquired. "Alone," said Billy. "It's very jolly there," said she. "It's so gay and the music is quite good." "H'm," meditated Billy. "The condemned man ate a hearty tea of Orange Pekoe and cress sandwiches," he reflected silently.
He shook himself with the action of a fine brute that has been stung by some teasing insect, and, mastering his emotions by an effort, walked away. But he was so absorbed in strange thoughts, that he stumbled up against Denzil Murray in a side street on the way to the Gezireh Palace Hotel without seeing him, and would have passed him altogether had not Denzil somewhat fiercely said: "Stop!"
So at least thought Sir Chetwynd Lyle, a stout gentleman of coarse build and coarser physiognomy, as he sat in a deep arm-chair in the great hall or lounge of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, smoking after dinner in the company of two or three acquaintances with whom he had fraternized during his stay in Cairo.
"You have left all the dear English people well at the Gezireh Palace? Lady Fulkeward was not too tired after her exertions at the ball? And you?" But Gervase was gazing at her in a speechless confusion of mind too great for words. A sudden, inexplicable emotion took possession of him, an emotion to which he could give no name, but which stupefied him and held him mute.
The table d'hote at the Gezireh Palace Hotel had already begun when Gervase entered the dining-room and sat down near Lady Fulkeward and Dr. Dean. "You have missed the soup," said her ladyship, looking up at him with a sweet smile. "All you artists are alike, you have no idea whatever of time. And how have you succeeded with that charming mysterious person, the Princess Ziska?"
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