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The object of returning to Meroee was to "meet Sir Marcus;" and I promised to be back in plenty of time to organize the return trip to Cairo. My departure, therefore, was all in the day's work: and the great sensation was Mrs. East's engagement.
He claimed to have proof that in a certain mountain not far from the Meroee pyramids, and much resembling them in shape, was hidden the tomb of a Candace who lived two hundred years earlier than the queen of that name mentioned in the New Testament, mistress of the eunuch baptized by St. Philip.
But he had been blamed for unscientific work, and in some quarters it was not believed that he had found the hoard at Meroee. This jealousy and injustice had prevented Ferlini's obtaining a grant for further explorations he wished to make.
Our secret was to be kept. Only the Sirdar knew and gave Fenton leave of absence for a few days. The Set did not suspect the existence of a mountain at Meroee more important than its neighbours. They did not even know what had become of Antoun Effendi after he bade them farewell, and "good luck." From the first, he had given it out that he must leave the party at Khartum.
"If I've heard, I'm afraid my memory's treacherous," said I, glad to show how unimportant to me were the schemes of financiers, but interested in the yacht's name, which carried my thoughts away to Meroee. "Great Scout! And I've spent two thousand in advertising! I've taken whole pages of London and Continental papers!"
In the notebook which had come down with other belongings of Ferlini the Egyptologist, to Ferlini the artist, was a copy of certain Demotic writing, of a peculiar and little known form. The original had existed, according to the dead Ferlini's notes, on the wall of an antechapel in one of the most ruinous pyramids at Meroee, decorated in a peculiarly barbaric Ethiopian style.
Now, when in blinding light of noon we pointed out, in an impersonal manner, to all who cared to see, the pyramid-field of Meroee, it seemed strange to think that no heart but Anthony's and mine beat the faster. The sun was so hot that most people, blinking dazedly, retired behind their screens of blue glass almost as soon as the train stopped, close to Garstang's camp.
There she was, as he had said, presented to him by Providence. If I should pour scorn upon the Lark suggestion, he might find it worth while to guide the Gilded Girl and her friends on their Nile pilgrimage. He left the question for me, and I decided to kill as many birds as possible with one stone. The name of the yacht was in itself an incentive: Candace Queen of Meroee our Meroee.
Now, as we were borne away from Meroee, we saw our hopes, which had begun to seem certainties, dissolving into air.
Anthony, acquainted with Meroee, its pyramids and pyramidal mountains, since his first coming to the Sudan, had been able to plan out our campaign almost at an hour's notice. And he knew one who, if the white men were in ignorance, could tell us all the most hidden happenings of the desert for fifty miles around.
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