‘Come away!  Come away!’ she cried in a low tone of terror.

CHAPTER IV

Margaret was sorry to say good-bye to Miss More and little Ida when the voyage was over, three days later.  She was instinctively fond of children, as all healthy women are, and she saw very few of them in her wandering life.  It is true that she did not understand them very well, for she had been an only child, brought up much alone, and children’s ways are only to be learnt and understood by experience, since all children are experimentalists in life, and what often seems to us foolishness in them is practical wisdom of the explorative kind.

When Ida had pulled Margaret away from the railing after watching Mr. Van Torp while he was talking to himself, the singer had thought very little of it; and Ida never mentioned it afterwards.  As for the millionaire, he was hardly seen again, and he made no attempt to persuade Margaret to take another walk with him on deck.

‘Perhaps you would like to see my place,’ he said, as he bade her good-bye on the tender at Liverpool.  ’It used to be called Oxley Paddox, but I didn’t like that, so I changed the name to Torp Towers.  I’m Mr. Van Torp of Torp Towers.  Sounds well, don’t it?’

‘Yes,’ Margaret answered, biting her lip, for she wanted to laugh.  ’It has a very lordly sound.  If you bought a moor and a river in Scotland, you might call yourself the M’Torp of 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.’