“Well,” resumed the Doctor slowly,--“Before we left Egypt I found him! But how I found him, and where, is my secret!” * * * * * * * * * * * * Society still speaks occasionally of Armand Gervase, and wonders in its feeble way when he will be “tired” of the Egyptian beauty he ran away with, or she of him. Society never thinks very far or cares very much for anything long, but it does certainly expect to see the once famous French artist “turn up” suddenly, either in his old quarters in Paris, or in one or the other of the fashionable resorts of the Riviera. That he should be dead has never occurred to anyone, except perhaps Dr. Maxwell Dean. But Dr. Dean has grown extremely reticent--almost surly; and never answers any questions concerning his _Scientific Theory of Ghosts_, a work which, when published, created a great deal of excitement, owing to its singularity and novelty of treatment. There was the usual “hee-hawing” from the donkeys in the literary pasture, who fondly imagined their brayings deserved to be considered in the light of serious opinion;--and then after a while the book fell into the hands of scientists only,--men who are beginning to understand the discretion of silence, and to hold their tongues as closely as the Egyptian priests of old did, aware that the great majority of men are never ripe for knowledge. Quite lately Dr. Dean attended two weddings,--one being 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