



Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England




Her Royal Highness
A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe
By William Le Queux
Published by Hodder and Stoughton.
This edition dated 1914.

Her Royal Highness, by William Le Queux.

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HER ROYAL HIGHNESS, BY WILLIAM LE QUEUX.

CHAPTER ONE.

THE NILE TRAVELLERS.

The mystic hour of the desert afterglow.

A large, square wooden veranda covered by a red and white awning, above
a wide silent sweep of flowing river, whose huge rocks, worn smooth
through a thousand ages, raised their backs about the stream, a glimpse
of green feathery palms and flaming scarlet poinsettias on the island
opposite, and beyond the great drab desert, the illimitable waste of
stony, undulating sands stretching away to the infinite, and bathed in
the blood-red light of the dying day.

On the veranda sat a crowd of chattering English men and women of wealth
and leisure--taking tea.  The women were mostly in white muslins, and
many wore white sun-helmets though it was December, while the men were
mostly in clean suits of "ducks."  An orchestra from Italy was playing
Musetta's waltz-song from "La Boheme," and the same people one meets at
the opera, at supper at the Savoy or the Ritz, were chattering over tea
and pastries served by silent-footed, dark-faced Nubians in scarlet
fezes and long white caftans.

The Cataract Hotel at Assouan is, at five o'clock, when the Eastern
desert is flooded by the wonderful green and crimson of the fading sun,
the most select yet cosmopolitan circle in all the world, the
meeting-place of those seekers after sunshine who have ascended the Nile
to the spot where rain has never fallen within the memory of man.

The poor old played-out Riviera has still its artificial attractions, it
is true.  One can, for once in one's life, enjoy the pasteboard of the
Nice carnival, the irresponsible frolic of the Battle of Flowers, the
night gaiety of Ciro's, breathe the combined odour of perspiration and
perfume in the rooms at Monte, eat the _gateaux_ at Vogarde's, play the
one-franc game of _boule_ at the Casino Municipal, or lunch off the
delicious trout from the tanks at the Reserve at Beaulieu.  But the Cote
d'Azur and its habitues, its _demi-mondaines_ and its _escrocs_ soon
pall upon one; hence Society nowadays goes farther afield--to Egypt, the
land of wonders, where there is ever-increasing charm, where the winter
days amid those stupendous monuments of a long-dead civilisation are
rainless, the land where Christmas is as warm as our English August,
where all is silent and dreamy beside the mighty Nile, and where the
brown-faced sons of the desert kneel Mecca-wards at sunset and praise
the name of Allah the One.  Allah is just; Allah is merciful.  There is
no God but Allah!

Some winter idlers go to Cairo, and there indulge in the gaieties of
Shepheard's, the Savoy, or the Gezireh Palace, or the teas and dances at
Mena House, or the breath of freedom at Heliopolis.  But Cairo is not
Egypt.  To see and to know Egypt one must ascend the Nile a farther
eight hundred miles to Luxor--the town where once stood ancient Thebes,
the City of a Hundred Gates, or to Assouan, the Aswan of the days of the
Pharaohs.

It is there, on the borders of the glowing desert of Nubia, far removed
from the stress of modern life, that one first begins to experience the
new joy of existence--life in that limitless wilderness of sky and sand,
life amid the relics of a mighty and wonderful age long since bygone and
forgotten.

On that afternoon of early December a merry party of four young people--
two girls and two men--sat at one of the small tables on the veranda.

The gay quartette, waited upon by Ahmed, an erect bronze statue,
picturesque in his white caftan and red sash, were laughing merrily as
the elder of the two men recounted the amusing progress of a party whom
he had accompanied on camels into the desert that afternoon.

Around them everywhere was loud chatter and laughter, while the
orchestra played dreamily, the music floating across the slowly
darkening river which flowed on its course from unexplored regions of
Central Africa away to the far-distant Mediterranean.

"I went across to Philae this morning to see the temples--Pharaoh's Bed,
and the rest.  Hardy pulled me out of bed at six o'clock," exclaimed the
younger of the two men--a tall, clean-shaven Englishman of a decided
