From the time she could dress herself and put up her own hair, Isabel
had been left much to herself. Her mother supplied her liberally with
money for clothes and considered that her duty to her daughter ended
there. They lived in an apartment hotel and had their coffee served in
their rooms in the morning. After that, Isabel was left to her own
devices, for committees and directors' meetings without number claimed
her mother.
More often than not, Isabel dined alone in the big dining-room
downstairs, and spent a lonely evening with a novel and a box of
chocolates. On pleasant days, she amused herself by going through the
shops and to the matinee. She did not make friends easily and the
splendid isolation common to hotels and desert islands left her
stranded, socially. She had been very glad to accept Aunt Francesca's
invitation, and the mother, looking back through her years of "world
service" to the quiet old house and dream-haunted garden, had thought it
would be a good place for Isabel for a time, and had hoped she might not
find it too dull to endure.
Madame Bernard had no patience with Mrs.
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