en that of Lady Ragnall. Here is a copy of
the letter it contained:

"My dear Mr. Quatermain,--Very strangely I have just seen at a
meeting of the Horticultural Society, a gentleman who declares
that a few days ago he sat next to you at some public dinner.
Indeed I do not think there can be any doubt for he showed me your
card which he had in his purse with a Yorkshire address upon it.

"A dispute had arisen as to whether a certain variety of Crinum
lily was first found in Africa, or Southern America. This
gentleman, an authority upon South American flora, made a speech
saying that he had never met with it there, but that an
acquaintance of his, Mr. Quatermain, to whom he had spoken on the
subject, said that he had seen something of the sort in the
interior of Africa." (This was quite true for I remembered the
incident.) "At the tea which followed the meeting I spoke to this
gentleman whose name I never caught, and to my astonishment learnt
that he must have been referring to you whom I believed to be
dead, for so we were told a long time ago. This seemed certain,
for in addition to the evidence of the name, he described your
personal appearance and told me that you had come to live in
England.

"My dear friend, I can assure you it is long since I heard anything
which rejoiced me so much. Oh! as I write all the past comes back,
flowing in upon me like a pent-up flood of water, but I trust that
of this I shall soon have an opportunity of talking to you. So let
it be for a while.

"Alas! my friend, since we parted on the shores of the Red Sea,
tragedy has pursued me. As you will know, for both my husband and
I wrote to you, although you did not answer the letters" (I never
received them), "we reached England safely and took up our old
life again, though to tell you the truth, after my African
experiences things could never be quite the same to me, or for the
matter of that to George either. To a great extent he changed his
pursuits and certain political ambitions which he once cherished,
seemed no longer to appeal to him. He became a student of past
history and especially of Egyptology, which under all the
circumstances you may think strange, as I did. However it suited
me well enough, since I also have tastes that way. So we worked
together and I can now read hieroglyphics as well as most people.
One year he said that he would like to go to E