"I didn't intend to go to Aix until late in the summer," said Grandmamma. "And I had thought of keeping you with me until then, but perhaps it's unwise to postpone your education any longer. So I'll take you there next week. I've written to Mademoiselle Lucinge and suggested that you should stay right on through the summer holidays, so that by Christmas, when you'll be nearly eleven years old, won't you, I shall expect to see quite a different Mary." Perhaps Mary looked sad at the notion of the change that was to be wrought in her by so many consecutive months of Mademoiselle Lucinge's _Pension_. At any rate, Lady Flower became momentarily affectionate, as she put her arm round Mary and said: "It's not your fault, you poor little thing, and you mustn't think I'm unkind. But I do want you to be able to get a great deal out of life, and there's nothing that is so terribly able to prevent that as not knowing exactly how to behave." Mary stared at her grandmother, utterly incapable of understanding what she was talking about. The old lady--for when Lady Flower unbent she suddenly became an old lady--took Mary upon her knee. "You funny little thing," she said, "you and I are so very much alone in the world." Then a moment later she disengaged herself from Mary's warm, responsive embrace and became her ivorine self. "When you go to school, I want you to give up writing to Mr. and Mrs. Fawcus. There will have to come a moment when you quite break off communication with them, and it had better be sooner than later. They have both behaved very well, which shows that they understand how completely the relationship between you and them has changed. Now give me a kiss and run off to Adèle. It is time you were in bed." Mary went sadly upstairs and dreamed of a castle full of dungeons and of being chased by a crocodile, the castle being the _pension de jeunes filles_ and the crocodile being Mademoiselle Lucinge herself. A week after this Lady Flower succeeded in making up her mind to brave the long railway journey down through the heart of France and leave her granddaughter at Châteaublanc. "Perhaps after all I could go to Aix earlier this year," she sighed with the air of proclaiming a martyrdom.