ter tone, she added:

"Besides, his donkey is the best on the river. It comes from Syria, and
is a perfect marvel. Give me Hamza, his donkey, and Ibrahim as my suite,
and you shall never hear a complaint from me, I promise you."

"Of course you shall have them," he said. "I like the man to whom his
beliefs mean something, even if they're not mine and could never be
mine."

So the fate of Hamza and Ibrahim was very easily settled.

But when Nigel called Ibrahim, and told him that he had decided on
taking him and Hamza to the Fayyum, and that he was to tell Hamza at
once, Ibrahim looked a little doubtful.

"All what my gentleman want I do," he said. "But Hamza do much business
in Luxor; I dunno if him come to the Fayyum."

He glanced deprecatingly at Mrs. Armine.

"I very glad to come, but about Hamza I dunno."

He spoke with such apparent sincerity that she was almost deceived, and
thought that perhaps some difficulty had really arisen.

"Offer him his own terms," exclaimed Nigel, "and I'll bet he'll be glad
to come."

"I go to see, my gentleman."

"You shall have him, Ruby, whatever his price," said Nigel.

Ibrahim, with great difficulty, he said, made a bargain with Hamza, and
on the following day the Villa Androud was left in Hassan's charge, and
the Armines went north by the evening express to Cairo, where they were
to stay two days and nights, in order that Mrs. Armine might see the
Pyramids and the Sphinx. Nigel had already taken rooms at the Mena
House, with a terrace exactly opposite to the Great Pyramid, and giving
on to the sand of the desert.

They breakfasted at Shepheard's, then hired a victoria to drive up
Ismail's road under the meeting lebbek-trees. Nigel was in glorious
spirits. It seemed to him that morning as if his life were culminating,
as if he were destined to a joy of which he was scarcely worthy. An
unworldly man, and never specially fond of society or anxious about its
edicts and its opinions, he did not suffer, as many men might have done,
under his knowledge of its surprised pity for him, or even contempt. But
in his secret heart he was glad that he was cut out of the succession to
his family's title and the estates. Had he succeeded to them, his
position would at once have become more difficult, his situation with
Ruby far more complicated. As things were, they two were free as the
wind. His soul leaped up to their freedom.

"I feel like a nomad to-day!" he exclaimed. "By Jov