_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. "Mr. Alison is downstairs in the drawing-room with _Miladi_, Mademoiselle." "I'll come down at once, Adèle. Please take this letter to the post." Mac rose from his place on the hearthrug and waddled after his mistress. _Chapter Four_ THE WIFE _Chapter Four: The Wife_ On a wet November afternoon a brougham drawn by a pair of gray horses and coming from the direction of Kensington drove along the Knightsbridge road and pulled up outside Lady Flower's house in King's Gate. From it alighted a young woman who by some indefinable effect of maturity, some sedate expression of achievement, revealed that she was married. The age at which women decide to be matrons varies like feminine fashions, and in the year 1890 English women still clung, if less tightly every year, to the fashion of a middle age as long as Queen Victoria's reign.