"I have a tug. I go away to-night."
"To Armant?"
"To Armant for some days. Then I go farther up the river. I have interests near Kom Ombos. I shall be away some time, and then drop down to Assiout. I have nothing more to do here."
"Interests in Assiout, too?"
"Oh, yes; at Assiout I have a great many. And just beyond here I have some--a little way up the river on the western bank."
"Lands?"
"I have orange-gardens there."
"I wonder you can manage to look after it all--sugar, cotton, quarries, house property, works, factories. Phew! It almost makes one's head spin. And you see into everything yourself!"
"Where the master's eye does not look, the servant's is turned away. Do you not find it so in the Fayyum?"
"I shall know in two or three days."
Nigel suddenly looked round at his wife.
"I hear you," she said, slowly. "You had forgotten all about me, but I was listening to you."
She moved, and sat straight up, putting her hands on the broad cushioned arms of the chair.
"I was receiving a lesson," she added.
"A lesson, Ruby?" said Nigel.
"A lesson in humility."
Both men tried to make her explain exactly what she meant, but she would not satisfy their curiosity.
"You have brains enough to guess," was all she said.
"We must be going, Nigel. Look! it is nearly sunset. Soon the river will be turning golden."
As she said the last word, she looked at Baroudi, and her voice seemed to linger on the word as on a word beloved.
"Won't you stay and see the sunset from here, madame?" he said.
"I am sure you have lots to do. I have been listening to some purpose, and I know you are a man of affairs, and can have very little time for social nonsense, such as occupies the thoughts of women. I feel almost guilty at having taken up even one of your hours."
Nigel thought there was in her voice a faint sound as if she were secretly aggrieved.
Baroudi made a polite rejoinder, in his curiously careless and calmly detached way, but he did not press them again to stay any longer, and Nigel felt certain that he had many things to do--preparations, perhaps, to make for his departure that evening. He was decidedly not a "woman's man," but was a keen and pertinacious man of affairs, who liked the activities of life and knew how to deal with men.
He bade them good-bye on the deck of the sailors.
Just before she stepped down into the waiting felucca, Mrs. Armine, as if moved by an impulse she could not resist, turned her head and gazed at the strange Arabic Letters of gold that were carved above the doorway through which she had once more passed.