While wandering through the exhibition Divine Egypt at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and coming across an artifact donated by Theodore M. Davis, I was reminded of a passage I had to cut from Lady of the Army.

During the Ayer family’s six-month trip through Egypt at the turn of the twentieth century, Beatrice truly came into her own. She fell in love with the mystery of the ancient world and developed a strong sense of curiosity and adventure, which would stand her in good stead as a future Army wife. Egypt was then the height of fashion among Americans; tombs were still being uncovered, and the boundaries between adventure, scholarship, and treasure hunting were thin.

Among the treasure hunters was family friend Theodore M. Davis, a Boston lawyer who credited Frederick Ayer, Beatrice’s father, with helping him build his fortune as his legal representative. This windfall allowed Mr. Davis to indulge his passion: Egyptology. He had funded and led digs in the Valley of the Kings, undoubtedly arranging visits to countless tombs as the Ayers sailed down the Nile in a dahabeah.

When the Ayers returned to Boston after spending two years across the Atlantic, Beatrice carried home a mummified toe in a glass jar smelling of eternity and a lifelong interest in other cultures. She longed to visit Davis’s Newport home, The Reef, filled with Egyptian treasures: gilded statuettes, alabaster jars, and fragments of hieroglyphs. The highlight would be a taste of four-thousand-year-old honey contained in a jar that once belonged to an Egyptian queen.

But the real fascination wasn’t only in his artifacts, but in Mr. Davis’s eccentric life. Her father warned Beatrice and her sister Katharine that Mr. and Mrs. Davis had not spoken to one another in over thirty years. The sisters learned the rumor was true when they were finally allowed to spend a few days at The Reef in 1898. The couple communicated only through their houseguest, Miss Andrews—supposedly Mrs. Davis’s niece and Mr. Davis’s mistress—who relayed their messages back and forth even when they sat at the same table.

For the young Ayer sisters, The Reef offered not only a glimpse into the glamour of Egypt and Newport but also into the dramatic world of adults. After dinner, they would walk down to the water to let out a scream, releasing all the day’s tensions as they marveled at the beauty of the past and the eccentricity of the present.