I made answer, promising to advise him of any such intention; for Giraud's company was pleasant under any circumstances, and there would be some keen sport in running Miste to earth with him beside me.
Thus I came away from Isabella's house with the conviction that she and no other was my most active enemy.

It was Isabella who had poisoned Giraud's mind against me.

He was too simple and honest to have conceived unaided such thoughts as he now harboured.

Moreover, he was, like many good-hearted people, at the mercy of every wind that blows, and, like the chameleon, took his colour from his environments.
It was to no other than Isabella that I owed Lucille's coldness, and I shrewdly suspected some ulterior motive in the action that transferred the home of the distressed ladies--for a time at least--from my house at Hopton to her own house in London.

Madame de Clericy and Lucille were no longer my guests, but hers; and each day diminished their debt towards me and made them more beholden to Isabella.
"I know," Lucille had said to me one day, "that you despise us for being happier in London than at Hopton; we are conscious of your contempt." And with a laugh she linked arms with Madame de Clericy, who hastened to say that Hopton was no doubt charming in the spring.
I had long ago discovered that Lucille ruled her mother's heart, where, indeed, no other interest entered.