e heard of Armand Carrier?"

"The best _chef_ in Europe, madame? How should I not have heard of him
among my friends of Paris?"

"He was in my service for five years."

There was a pause. Nigel suddenly turned red. Baroudi moved his large
eyes slowly from Mrs. Armine to him, and at length observed calmly:

"I felicitate you both. You must have had a treasure. But why did you
let him go?"

He addressed the question to Nigel.

"He was not in my service," said Nigel, with a sudden, very English
stiffness that was almost like haughtiness. "It was long before we were
married."

"Oh--I see. But what a pity! Then you did not have the benefit of eating
his marvellous _plats_."

"No. I don't care about that sort of thing."

"Really!"

They talked of other matters, but Nigel had lost all his _bonhomie_, and
seemed unable to recover it.

Baroudi, like a good Mohammedan, declined to drink any wine, but when
the fruit was brought, Mrs. Armine got up.

"I'll leave you for a little while," she said. "You'll find me on the
terrace. Although Mahmoud Baroudi drinks nothing, I am sure he likes
men's talk better than woman's chatter."

Baroudi politely but rather perfunctorily denied this.

"But what do you say," he added, "to coming as my guest to take a cup of
coffee and a liqueur at the Winter Palace Hotel? To-night there is the
first performance of a Hungarian band which I introduced last winter to
Egypt, and which--I am told; I am not, perhaps, a judge of your Western
music--plays remarkably. What do you say? Would it please you, madame?"

"Yes, do let us go. Shan't we go?"

She turned to Nigel.

"Of course," he said, "if you like. But can you walk in that dress?"

She nodded.

"It's perfectly dry outside. I'll come down in a moment."

She was away for nearly ten; then she returned, wrapped up in a
marvellous ermine coat, and wearing on her head a yellow toque with a
high aigrette at one side.

"I'm ready now," she said.

"What a beautiful coat!" Nigel said.

He had not seen it before. He gently smoothed it with his brown fingers.
Then he looked at her, took them away, and stepped back rather abruptly.

When they arrived at the great hotel the band was already playing in the
hall, and a number of people, scattered about in little detached groups,
were listening to it and drinking Turkish coffee. It was very early in
the season. The rush up the Nile had not begun, and travellers had not
yet cemented thei