The book, as its title implies, ends sadly. How sadly, those who have read it will know, and those who may read it hereafter will soon discover, for it is quite a little book, and its price but a florin.
“These are the people,” writes Marie Corelli in “Ziska,” alluding to the tourists assembled in Cairo, “who usually leave England on the plea of being unable to stand the cheery, frosty, and in every respect healthy winter of their native country—
“that winter, which with its wild winds, its sparkling frost and snow, its holly trees bright with scarlet berries, its merry hunters galloping over field and moor during daylight hours, and its great log fires roaring up the chimneys at evening, was sufficiently good for their forefathers to thrive upon and live through contentedly up to a hale and hearty old age in the times when the fever of traveling from place to place was an unknown disease, and home was indeed ‘sweet home.’ Infected by strange maladies of the blood and nerves, to which even scientific physicians find it hard to give suitable names, they shudder at the first whiff of cold, and, filling huge trunks with a thousand foolish
"Killiecrankie Cottage” Where “Ziska” was Finished
"Avon Croft” Where “The Master Christian” was Finished
things which have, through luxurious habit, become necessities to their pallid existences, they hastily depart to the Land of the Sun, carrying with them their nameless languors, discontents, and incurable illnesses, for which Heaven itself, much less Egypt, could provide no remedy.”
Be that as it may, the tourists assembled at the Gezireh Palace Hotel one winter were treated to a vision of loveliness which for a time made them momentarily forget their nameless languors in spells of admiration and envy, according to the sex which claimed them, the vision in question taking an apparently human shape in the person of the Princess Ziska.