"But you cannot have guessed all the misery that your father's marriage brought in its train. It killed him: it killed your mother: it killed your mother's father: it might have killed you. Your father was dependent upon his father. He defied him, and what was the result?"

Lady Flower left out nothing in the tale of the romantic marriage that could bring home to her granddaughter what it meant to run in the face of class tradition.

"The situation is almost the same now as when I entreated your father twenty years ago to think what he was doing. But in this case it is worse, because in this case it is the man who is of lower station. Mary, I implore you to give up this good-looking but hopelessly ineligible young Frenchman."

Lady Flower burst into tears, and Mary, who would have been less amazed to behold tears run down the cheeks of a marble statue, promised to give up Pierre.

This was the letter she wrote:

23 King's Gate, W.,
May 22, 1880.

I am afraid that I am not the wonderful being you have so often told me that I was. I cannot meet you to-morrow on the banks of the Serpentine, however fine the day is. I do not regret for an instant that I let myself fall in love with you. No, not for an instant, Pierre. I don't know why I say "let myself fall in love," because I could not help it. It was nothing to do with me. But I have promised my grandmother never to see you again and to give you up. I couldn't explain why, even if I were to see you. It has nothing to do with you, but only with me. If I married you I should have to elope, and though I should be happy when I was with you, I should be feeling all the while that my grandmother's old age was being made unhappy. You must not blame her. She is convinced that we are not meant for each other. My father and mother were drowned many years ago, because they eloped; she has lost her husband and her eldest son also: she is entirely alone in the world, and she was kind to me when I was a little girl. Forget me, Pierre, and try to forgive me. Do not think that I do not love you. Don't think that, Pierre. I believe that I have loved you ever since I first saw you at Châteaublanc. Why do I go on writing? I don't know; but somehow I can't bear to finish this letter which is the last I shall ever write to you. Don't think of me too unkindly. If you ever do think of me, think of me that morning by the Serpentine when you first kissed my hand. Pierre, I can feel that kiss still. I shall feel it till I'm an old woman. I've nothing more to say, and yet I can't stop....

Mary put down her pen for a minute, and stared in front of her. Tick-tick! Tick-tick! Tick-tick! Tick-tick! The ormulu clock swung Pierre out of her life. She leaned over quickly and wrote:

Good-by, good-by,
Mary.

Adèle came into the room.