"She's a dear," said Isabel with enthusiasm, "an absolute dear. I don't know what I should have been like without her, because father always insisted on his own people treating me as if I was a real princess, and we never saw any one else. If it hadn't been for her, I should probably have believed everything they told me." She paused for a moment as though reflecting on this narrow but fortunate escape, and then straightening herself in the seat, she added: "I was really quite happy until Uncle Philip sent her away."
"Is Uncle Philip our impetuous friend of Richmond Park?" inquired Tony.
"That's him," said Isabel, with a queenly disregard for grammar. "He is my mother's brother, and his real name is the Count de Sé. He came to live with us in Paris after father was wounded. He is a nasty, mean, hateful sort of man, but father liked him because he was the only person left who treated him like a king. Poor father was nearly always drunk in those days, and I don't think he really knew what he was doing. Uncle Philip used to talk to him and flatter him and all that sort of thing, and at last he got father to make a will appointing him as my guardian. The very first thing he did, as soon as father died, was to send away Miss Watson."
"I don't think I like Uncle Philip," said Tony. "I am glad I pushed him off the car."
"So am I," said Isabel with surprising viciousness. "I only hope he hurt himself. He did fall in the road, didn't he?" she added anxiously.
"I think so," said Tony. "It sounded like it anyway."
"I can't help feeling horrid about him," she went on. "It is all his fault that any of this has happened."
"I am glad to hear something in his favour," said Tony.
"Oh, I don't mean my being here and knowing you. I love that part of it. I mean Richmond and Pedro and Da Freitas, and—and—oh, all the hateful, ghastly time I have had the last month."
She broke off with a slight shiver, as though the very memory were physically unpleasant. Tony smoked his cigarette in sympathetic silence until she felt ready to continue.