“Very pretty,” she said, approvingly.  “But I don’t like the jacket.  It looks too English.”

“It is a present from London, my lady.”

“Al-lah—­”

Always the sailors’ song seemed growing louder, more vehement, more insistent, like a strange fanaticism ever increasing in the bosom of the night.

“Where are those people singing, Ibrahim?” said Mrs. Armine.

She put his flower in the front of her gown, opening her cloak to do so.

“They seem to get nearer and nearer.  Are they coming down the river?”

“I s’pose they are in a felucca, my lady.  They are Noobian peoples.  They always make that song.  It is a pretty song.”

He gently moved his head, following the rhythm of the music.  Between the green and gold folds of his silken handkerchief his gentle brown eyes always regarded her.

“Nubian people!” she said.  “But Luxor isn’t in Nubia.”

“Noobia is up by Aswan.  The obelisks come from there.  I will show you the obelisks to-morrow, my lady.  There is no dragoman who understands all ’bout obelisks like Ibrahim.”

“I am sure there isn’t.  But”—­those voices of the singing sailors were beginning almost to obsess her—­“are all the boatmen Nubians then?”

“Nao!” he replied, with a sudden cockney accent.

“But these that are singing?”

“I say they are Noobian peoples, my lady.  They are Mahmoud Baroudi’s Noobian peoples.”

“Baroudi’s sailors!” said Mrs. Armine.

She sat up straight in her chair.

“But Mahmoud Baroudi isn’t here, at Luxor?”

Ibrahim’s soft eyes had become suddenly sharp and bright.

“Do you know Mahmoud Baroudi, my lady?”

“We met him on the ship coming from Naples.”

“Very big—­big as Rameses the Second, the statue of the King hisself what you see before you at the Ramesseum—­eyes large as mine, and hair over them what goes like that!”

He put up his brown hands and suddenly sketched Baroudi’s curiously shaped eyebrows.

Mrs. Armine nodded.  Ibrahim stretched out his arm towards the Nile.

“Those are his Noobian peoples.  They come from his dahabeeyah.  It is at Luxor, waiting for him.  They have nuthin’ to do, and so they make the fantasia to-night.”

“He is coming here to Luxor?”

Ibrahim nodded his head calmly.

“He is comin’ here to Luxor, my lady, very nice man, very good man.  He is as big as Rameses the Second, and he is as rich as the Khedive.  He has money—­as much as that.”

He threw out his arms, as if trying to indicate the proportions of a great world or of an enormous ocean.

“Here comes my gentleman!” he added, suddenly dropping his arms.

Nigel returned from the darkness of the garden.

“Hulloh, Ibrahim!”

“Hulloh, my gentleman!”

“Keeping your mistress company while I was gone?  That is right.”