Isabelle, who had been observing the entire catastrophic sequence of events with the detached composure of a monarch watching peasants revolt, finally released a long, elegant sigh. It was the kind of sigh that carried the weight of centuries of aristocratic disappointment, the exhalation of someone who had anticipated disaster but had allowed it to unfold for anthropological purposes.
She reached into the pocket of her cashmere lounge pants and extracted her datapad, her movements precise and economical, like a surgeon preparing to excise a particularly offensive tumor from society's body.
