“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 their travelling acquaintanceships.  People looked at each other rather vaguely, or definitely ignored each other, with profiles and backs which said quite plainly:  “We won’t have anything to do with you until we know more about you.”  The entrance of the party from the Villa Androud created a strong diversion.  As soon as Baroudi was perceived by the attendants, there was a soft and gliding movement to serve him.  The tall Nubians in white and scarlet smiled, salaamed, and showed their pleasure and their desire for his notice.  The German hall porter hastened forward, with a pink smile upon his countenance; the chef d’orchestre, a real Hungarian, began to play at him with fervour; and a black gentleman in gold and scarlet, who looked like a Prince of the East, but who was really earning his living in connection with the lift to the first floor, bounded to show them to a table.

Baroudi accepted all these attentions with a magnificent indifference that had in it nothing of assumption.  They sat down, he ordered coffee and liqueurs, and they listened to the music, which was genuinely good, and had the peculiar fervent and yet melancholy flavour which music receives from the bows of Hungarian fiddlers.  Nigel was smoking.  He seemed profoundly attentive, did not attempt any conversation, and kept his eyes on the ground.  Mrs. Armine seemed listening attentively, too, but she had not been sitting for five minutes before she had seen and summed up every group in her neighborhood; had defined the nationalities, criticized the gowns and faces of the women, and made up her mind as to the characters of the men who accompanied them, and as to the family or amorous ties uniting them to each other and the men.

And she had done more than this:  she had measured the amount of interest, of curiosity, of admiration, of envy, of condemnation which she herself excited with the almost unerring scales of the clever woman who has lived for years both in the great and the half worlds.