Glen Torp, in the same way.'

'I see you're laughing at me,' said the millionaire, with a quiet
smile of a man either above or beyond ridicule. 'But it's all a game
in a toy-shop anyway, this having a place in Europe. I buy a doll to
play with when I have time, and I can call it what I please, and
smash its head when I'm tired of it. It's my doll. It isn't any one's
else's. The Towers is in Derbyshire if you want to come.'

Margaret did not 'want to come' to Torp Towers, even if the doll
wasn't 'any one's else's.' She was sorry for any person or thing
that had the misfortune to be Mr. Van Torp's doll, and she felt her
inexplicable fear of him coming upon her while he was speaking. She
broke off the conversation by saying good-bye rather abruptly.

'Then you won't come,' he said, in a tone of amusement.

'Really, you are very kind, but I have so many engagements.'

'Saturday to Monday in the season wouldn't interfere with your
engagements. However, do as you like.'

'Thank you very much. Good-bye again.'

She escaped, and he looked after her, with an unsatisfied expression
that was almost wistful, and that would certainly not have been in his
face if she could have seen it.

Griggs was beside her when she went ashore.

'I had not much to do after all,' he said, glancing at Van Torp.

'No,' Margaret answered, 'but please don't think it was all
imagination. I may tell you some day. No,' she said again, after a
short pause, 'he did not make himself a nuisance, except that once,
and now he has asked me to his place in Derbyshire.'

'Torp Towers,' Griggs observed, with a smile.

'Yes. I could hardly help laughing when he told me he had changed its
name.'

'It's worth seeing,' said Griggs. 'A big old house, all full of other
people's ghosts.'

'Ghosts?'

'I mean figuratively. It's full of things that remind one of the
people who lived there. It has one of the oldest parks in England.
Lots of pheasants, too--but that cannot last long.'

'Why not?'

'He won't let any one shoot them! They will all die of overcrowding in
two or three years. His keepers are three men from the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.'

'What a mad idea!' Margaret laughed. 'Is he a Buddhist?'

'No.' Paul Griggs knew something about Buddhism. 'Certainly not! He's
eccentric. That's all.'

They were at the pier. Half-an-hour later they were in the train
together, and there was no one else in the carriage. Miss More an