"Oh, no, thank you, my lady. Too kind of you, I'm sure, but I'd really rather be going, now that I've seen Mary safely here. I've arranged to go back to Calais and wait there the night. Mr. Fawcus thought he'd be less anxious that way than if I was to stay in Paris all by myself. We shall miss Mary most terribly, my lady. If I might just kiss her good-by and be off? I'm sure it's a pity Mr. Fawcus couldn't have come. He's much superior to me in every way." "Well, if you insist on going back at once," said Lady Flower, who was beginning to think that after all she had nothing to say to Mrs. Fawcus, and who would have cut out her tongue rather than ask the one question she wanted to ask about the death of her son. "Yes, indeed I think I will, my lady, and thank you kindly, I'm sure, for the offer of tea." Mrs. Fawcus darted forward, kissed Mary passionately several times, and seemed to slide out of the room across the parquet and out of her life forever. When Lady Flower was alone with her granddaughter she was more at ease. She was little changed by ten years; she was still the same delicately ivorine creature as when she banished this child's father from her heart with words of contempt for this child's mother. Not that she ever really did banish Edward; the death of her elder son with all his valor and renown did not touch her half so deeply as the loss of Edward. If it had not been for Sir Richard's determination to ignore Edward's offspring she might long ago have sent for Mary. Her husband's bitterness against Edward, drowned dead though he was by that time, was intensified when John was killed in the hunting-field. He declared fiercely to his wife that he was glad Edward had not left a son, for that he would rather the name and title of the Flowers should perish utterly than that the fruit of his son's disgraceful alliance with one of his own tenants should carry on both. Mary was astonished to find how young her grandmother was. She had expected a very old lady--almost she had pictured her with a spinning-wheel and wearing a steeple-crowned hat--who would be bent double and talk in a high, cracked voice. Instead of that she found some one who looked much younger than Aunt Lucy. "You'll have to go to school, you know," her grandmother was saying. "You'll have a great deal to learn. Let me look at your hands, child. Dear me, I believe you're going to have hands like mine. But your nails are a little grubby." "That's because I've been gardening all last week." "Gardening? Where did you garden in London?" "In the attic. Mr. Bristowe let me garden there." "No wonder your nails are grubby. And who is Mr. Bristowe?" "He was the manager of Holland and Brown, where Uncle William was caretaker." Lady Flower shuddered. "Listen, Mary. I would rather you gave up calling Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus uncle and aunt. They are not any relation to you, and now that you are getting older you must learn to speak of them as Mr. Fawcus and Mrs. Fawcus."