Mr. Greyne looked at his wife with reverence. In such moments he realized, almost too poignantly, her great position.
“I will be careful,” he said. “What would you recommend me to say?”
“Well”—Mrs. Greyne knit her superb forehead—“I should suggest that you present yourself as an ordinary traveler, but with a specially inquiring bent of mind and a slight tendency towards the—the—er—hidden things of life.”
“I suppose you wish me to visit the public houses?”
“I wish you to see everything that has part or lot in African frailty. Go everywhere, see everything. Bring your notes to me, and I will select such fragments of the broken commandments as suit my purpose, which is, as always, the edifying of the human race. Only this time I mean to purge it as by fire.”
“That corner house in Park Lane, next to the Duke of Ebury’s, would suit us very well,” said Mr. Greyne reflectively.
“We could sell our lease here at an advance,” his wife rejoined. “You will not waste your journey, Eustace?”
“My love,” returned Mr. Greyne with decision, “I will apply to Rook on arrival, and, if I find his man unsatisfactory, if I have any reason to suspect that I am not being shown everything—more especially in the Kasbah region, which, from the guide-books we bought to-day, is, I take it, the most abandoned portion of the city—I will seek another cicerone.”
“Do so. And now to bed. You must sleep well to-night in preparation for the journey.”
It was their invariable habit before retiring to drink each a tumbler of barley water, which was set out by the butler in Mrs. Greyne’s study. After this nightcap Mrs. Greyne wrote up her anticipatory diary, while Mr. Greyne smoked a mild cigar, and then they went to bed. To-night, as usual, they repaired to the sanctum, and drank their barley water. Having done so, Mr. Greyne drew forth his cigar-case, while Mrs. Greyne went to her writing-table, and prepared to unlock the drawer in which her diary reposed, safe from all prying eyes.