"But is there a felucca to take us over?" she added.
"In four five minutes, my lady."
"Call to me from here when it is ready. I leave all the lunch and tea arrangements to you."
"All what you want you must have, my lady."
Was that a formula of Ibrahim's? To-day he seemed to speak the words with a conviction that was not usual, with some curious under-meaning. How much of a boy was he really? As Mrs. Armine went upstairs she was wondering about him.
Nigel had said to her, "You are blossoming here." And he had said to her, "You are beautiful, but you do not trust your own beauty." And that was true, perhaps. To-day she would be quite alone with Ibrahim and the Egyptians; she would be in perfect freedom, and downstairs upon the terrace the idea had come to her to fill up the time that must elapse before the felucca arrived in "undoing" her face. She went into her bedroom, and shut and locked the door.
"The felucca is here suttinly, my lady!"
Ibrahim called from the terrace some ten minutes later; then he came round to the front of the house, and cried out the words again.
"I shall be down in a moment."
Another ten minutes went by, and then Mrs. Armine appeared. She had an ivory fly-whisk in her hand, and a white veil was drawn over her face.