“Good-night!” added Courtney.
And with an amiable salutation the Doctor went his way. The ball-room was now quite deserted, and the hotel servants were extinguishing the lights.
“A curious little man, that Doctor,” observed Gervase, addressing Courtney, to whom as yet he had not been formally introduced.
“Very curious!” was the reply. “I have known him for some years,—he is a very clever man, but I have never been able quite to make him out. I think he is a bit eccentric. He’s just been telling me he believes in ghosts.”
“Ah, poor fellow!” and Gervase yawned as, with his companion, he crossed the deserted ball-room. “Then he has what you call a screw loose. I suppose it is that which makes him interesting. Good-night!”
“Good-night!”
And separating, they went their several ways to the small, cell-like bedrooms, which are the prime discomfort of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, and soon a great silence reigned throughout the building. All Cairo slept,—save where at an open lattice window the moon shone full on a face up-turned to her silver radiance,—the white, watchful face, and dark, sleepless eyes of the Princess Ziska.
CHAPTER VI.
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. Lady Chetwynd Lyle, portly and pig-faced, sat on the terrace working at an elaborate piece of cross-stitch, talking scandal in the civilest tone imaginable, and damning all her “dear friends” with that peculiar air of entire politeness and good breeding which distinguishes certain ladies when they are saying nasty things about one another. Her daughters, Muriel and Dolly, sat dutifully near her, one reading the Daily Dial, as befitted the offspring of the editor and proprietor thereof, the other knitting. Lord Fulkeward lounged on the balustrade close by, and his lovely mother, attired in quite a charming and girlish costume of white foulard exquisitely cut and fitting into a waist not measuring more than twenty-two inches, reclined in a long deck-chair, looking the very pink of painted and powdered perfection.
“You are so very lenient,” Lady Chetwynd Lyle was saying, as she bent over her needlework. “So very lenient, my dear Lady Fulkeward, that I am afraid you do not read people’s characters as correctly as I do. I have had, owing to my husband’s position in journalism, a great deal of social experience, and I assure you I do not think the Princess Ziska a safe person. She may be perfectly proper—she may be—but she is not the style we are accustomed to in London.”