As Kitty Clement has played a somewhat prominent part in these pages, it may be well that I should tell all I know of her career up to this time. Since my restoration I have seen her several times at parties in London, and have, on these occasions, studied her only from a distance; because, as I am not anxious to be recognised as her former maid, Jill, I do not intend to claim kindred, renew the old acquaintance begun at Lugano, or do anything else that would direct her attention to me. But the strange charm which she always had for me is not yet wholly dead; and I still cannot help observing her course with an interest which I do not feel in that of any one else. Her great object evidently is, to make her husband a conspicuous figure in the political world. She has persuaded the Premier to appoint him to some government office of minor importance; receives at her parties hosts of members of parliament, fashionables, and lions, once a week regularly; and does all she can to increase the influence and popularity of his name in every way possible. If he had anything like her ability, strength, and wits, and were as much above the common run of men as she is above that of women, her help would certainly make him Prime Minister before long. But, unluckily for her schemes, his talents are in no respect above the average; and though he discharges the duties of his office in a most painstaking and praiseworthy manner, yet devotion to work alone will never enable a man to rank as a great leader. Even, however, if her ambition should not be fully gratified, she may at all events congratulate herself on being an extremely great lady, and enjoying a position that many women would deem the acme of felicity. She interchanges dinners with royalties; her parties are thronged; and as I frequently see her goings and comings chronicled in the newspapers, I imagine that she has attained sufficient celebrity for the general public to wish to be informed of her movements. And what more than that does the heart of an ordinary woman desire?
She has presented her husband with an heir to the title, and other children also; she is spoken of as an exemplary wife and mother; no breath of slander has ever touched her; and she is—to all appearance—as perfectly contented with her lot as she certainly has cause to be. As for the feeling she once had for Captain Norroy, I have no doubt it has been crushed to nothing, and that when he and his wife are amongst her guests, she behaves to them exactly as she does to every one else—that is to say, with a stately graciousness and aplomb which seem as though beyond the power of human beings or events to ruffle.
Yet the expression of her face strikes me as being strangely hard and cold for a person so admired and popular as she is, and who is so successful in making herself generally agreeable. It is not the look of a woman who has all she wants, but of one who has incased herself in impervious armour, which she never lays aside, and which no soft emotion can penetrate either from within or from without. And notwithstanding all her prosperity and appearance of contentment, I cannot help doubting whether she is really and in her secret soul happy. Does ambition fill and satisfy her life entirely? Or is there room for any lurking regret for the dream of love that came to her once—the romance that might have been, which is now buried far out of sight, and can never come to life again?
And sometimes, too, I wonder, whether her nature was always as stony as it is now (for even to her husband and children she is rather kind than loving), whether her softness towards Captain Norroy was only the exception that proved the rule, and whether she ever has felt or could feel genuine, warm affection for other people. She seems incapable of tenderness now; but I am not sure whether before her marriage she may not have had a capacity for loving which she has now lost—perhaps killed deliberately for fear of its proving troublesome to her. And if so, and if in those days she and I had been thrown together (as might very likely have happened, had it not been for my step-mother) as equals instead of as mistress and maid, should we have become friends, I wonder?
Who can say! Now, as always, she is an enigma hard to read.
THE END.
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Edinburgh.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE
Obvious printing errors have been silently corrected throughout. Otherwise, inconsistencies and possible errors have been preserved.