'It is quite delightful to see her like this—quite a grand personage, with a fine carriage and livery servants and all the rest of it; isn't it, auntie? I may now confess, Mary, that I have been the least bit afraid that your talking about living in a grand old house with a number of attendants to do your bidding, was'——
'Was what, goosy?'
'Too much like a fairy tale; and you know you used to talk like that sometimes, when you—when I have fancied that you were not quite happy.'
'Are you satisfied at last, dearie?'
'Yes, I am—yes, quite. You look really happy.' I mentally offered up a thanksgiving, as she went on: 'But of course I am longing to know how it all came about. Recollect, you have promised to explain everything very exactly in your first letter. Recollect too that I leave dear auntie to your care; and of course we shall expect to find our sister here on our return.'
I promised; and when we presently conducted the bride in her travelling-dress to the drawing-room, she was looking happy enough to satisfy Philip, who, I noticed, glanced anxiously from me to her as we entered.
We all went down the winding path with them to the carriage waiting in the road below; and sent them off with all sorts of merry speeches and good wishes and the orthodox accompaniment of old slippers.
[THE LAND OF THE PHARAOHS.]
The past lends to Egypt a charm more entrancing than its cloudless skies and delicious climate. Go where you will, antiquity meets you at every turn. Around you lie the ruins of cities whose very names have been obliterated in the silent march of the ages. Before you flows the sacred river upon whose waves floated centuries ago the little ark of the outcast Hebrew infant, and the golden barge of the gorgeous daughter of the Ptolemies. Time was when this old Nile was the highway down which many successive nations rushed to conquest: for the Ethiopian, the Assyrian, the Persian, the Roman, and the Saracen have all lorded it in turn in this ancient realm of the Pharaohs. Now vexed no longer with the fleets of rival monarchs, the mighty river rocks with slumberous swell the lotus lilies on its tranquil breast; and on its lonely banks, which have rung so often in days gone by to the shrill pæans of triumph, the palms in the sultry noontide throw their long shadows athwart ruined temples and colossal statues, grand in execution and faultless in detail, which reveal in every outline the perfection to which the arts of architecture and sculpture were carried in this their earliest cradle. The soil is strewed with fragments of broken columns and defaced colossi. Buried beneath the drifting sand of the Desert lie the glorious and yet grotesque masterpieces of the Egyptian chisel. Serene, grave, majestic, inundated with a flood of harmonious light, the calm features of the once inscrutable Sphinx look down upon us, as many centuries ago they looked down in their grand repose upon the wondering Father of History. Time has pressed lightly on these Titanic temples and vast tomb palaces, but from their shadowy portals the worshippers have gone for ever. Desolate and state-fallen, they open now only to admit the curious stranger.