“Most certainly,” replied the professor. “I am, of course, most intensely interested in this matter, and if I can be of any assistance I shall only be too happy. Personally, I believe that by this important papyri the great treasures which Cleopatra was known to possess, and of which history gives us no account after her death, may actually be recovered.”
Chapter Thirty Five.
Conclusion.
Twelve months have passed.
The days have slipped away rapidly since that well-remembered morning when I stood beside Professor Stewart and watched him, peering through his glasses, decipher those puzzling hieroglyphics which Sanehat had penned two thousand years before.
No doubt you read the newspapers and, of course, have seen the interesting results of the excavations made and still being continued by the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the auspices of the Egyptian Government, with whom Mr Fryer, as the late Arnold Edgecumbe’s executor, came to a mutual arrangement.
Professor Stewart has, for some months past, been out at the Temple of Denderah, that cyclopean pile which Cleopatra built for herself, and though from time to time vague reports have found their way into the papers of important discoveries close to that famous edifice, yet, truth to tell, we are endeavouring to keep the actual extent of the discoveries as private as possible for the present. All I can say is that ancient jewels, worth many thousands of pounds, taken from the spot have already reached London—jewels, ornaments, and heart scarabs which once adorned the person of Egypt’s most gorgeous queen.
But it is of my own sweet-faced queen that I think the most—she who sits here in silent love beside me at Upton End as I now pen these final lines. We have already been man and wife for eight months, and, after a delightful honeymoon spent beside the Nile, during which we paid a visit, of course, to Cleopatra’s temple, where Professor Stewart was superintending operations, have returned home and settled down in peace and happiness—a rural bliss, perfect and entire, that will last always.