Peter had ordered a fruitless search to be made
amongst the debris in the tower that she felt satisfied of the
stranger's safety.

A newspaper reporter tried to prove that a gallant attempt had been
made to save some valuables in the tower, and went so far as to head
one of his paragraphs, 'A Gallant Act.' But there was nothing of value
in the tower rooms except the old furniture and books and the tapestry
on the walls, and these had all been destroyed.

The ruined interior of the tower smouldered the whole of the next day;
though the walls still stood, gaunt and grim, windowless and gutted by
the fire. But the building was covered by insurance, and even the loss
of the tapestries seemed more than compensated by the fact that an
absorbing topic of general interest had been provided in a quiet and
uneventful neighbourhood.

CHAPTER VII

It was a matter of necessity with Mrs. Ogilvie to purchase a new dress
for the wedding. Wherefore, in the week following the night of the
ball, she went to London for the day, while builders and carpenters
were already at work repairing the ruined tower.

'It will be inconvenient,' she said, 'to go up and see my dressmaker
later when the house is full. Is it absolutely incumbent upon me, as
the mother of the bridegroom, to dress in grey satin, or have I
sufficiently scandalized my neighbours all my life to be able to wear
what I like?'

Usually her maid accompanied her when Mrs. Ogilvie went up to London;
but, in her wilful way, she had decided to-day that maids were useless,
and that her present maid had round eyes that stared at her from the
opposite side of the carriage when they travelled together. In short,
Mrs. Ogilvie intended to go to London alone.

She departed with some sort of idea of enjoying the expedition; the
purchase of clothes was a real aesthetic pleasure to her, and even the
feel of the pavements in the world-forsaken London of September had
something friendly about it that spoke to her with an intimacy and a
kindliness such as she never experienced among country sights and
sounds. A morning at Paquin's revived her as sea breezes revive other
women. Lunch followed in a room pleasantly shaded from the sun and
decorated with a fair amount of taste. But the food was uneatable, of
course; Mrs. Ogilvie could never get a thing to eat that she liked.

It was nearly four o'clock before the brougham which had met her at the
station in the morning drew up