who had "let her in."
She did not mentally add to the tiny catalogue--"and the man who loved
her."

For a long while she sat quite still, leaning her head on the cushion,
hearing the singing and crying voices, the perpetual whisper of the
water against the _Loulia's_ sides, watching the gleaming Nile and the
vessels that crept upon it going towards the south; and now, for the
first time, there woke in her a desire to follow them up the river, to
sail, too, into the golden south. Instead of the longing to return to
and reign in England, came the desire to push England out of her life,
almost to kick it away scornfully and have done with it for ever. Since
she could never reign in England, she felt that she hated England.

"In the summer? Oh, I always spend the summer in England."

Nigel was speaking cheerfully. She began to attend to his conversation
with Baroudi, but she still looked out to the Nile, and did not change
her position. They were really talking about agriculture, and apparently
with enthusiasm. Nigel was giving details of his efforts in the Fayyum.
Now they discussed sand-ploughs. It seemed an unpromising subject, but
they fell upon it with ardour, and found it strangely fruitful. Even
Baroudi seemed to be deeply interested in sand-ploughs. Mrs. Armine
forgot the Nile. She was not at all interested in sand-ploughs, but she
was interested in this other practical side of Baroudi, which was now
being displayed to her. Very soon she knew that of all these details
connected with land, its cultivation, the amount of profit it could be
made to yield in a given time, the eventual probabilities of profit in a
more distant future, he was a master. And Nigel was talking to him, was
listening to him, as a pupil talks and listens to a master. The greedy
side of Mrs. Armine was very practical, as Meyer Isaacson had realized,
and therefore she was fitted to appreciate at its full value the
practical side of Baroudi. She felt that here was a man who knew very
well how and where to tap the streams whose waters are made of gold,
and, as romance seduces many women, so, secretly, this powerful
money-making aptitude seduced her temperament, or an important part of
it. She was fascinated by this aptitude, but presently she was still
more fascinated by the subtle use that he was making of it.

He was deliberately rousing up Nigel's ambitions connected with labour,
was deliberately stinging him to activity, deliberately prompti