It was the quality of reasoning and of analysis in her secretary which grew to interest her most deeply. Katherine was her perpetual study, inasmuch as she stood so far apart from the world of fools.
Their visit to Paris had been a great experience for Katherine. She took the place historically, not as she had taken it before, as the setting for a love dream. She had had a recurrence of the violent longing for Lord Algy when they arrived at the Gare du Nord, that strangely sudden seizure of passion to which she seemed periodically subject; when she knew that if at the moment Fate were to offer him to her again she would find the temptation of acceptance too strong to resist. She was afterwards always extremely thankful that this did not occur, and that she was given time to resume her self-command.
When first she drove down the Champs Elysées, a strange sense of fear came over her—what if after all that Palatial Hotel episode in her life should have power one day to raise up its ghost and destroy the fabric of her ambitions? The more she saw of the great world, the more she realised that such a breach of convention, such a frank laying aside of all recognised standards of morality, would never be forgiven if discovered. Incidents of the kind occurred every day, but must always be rigorously kept out of sight. She grew to understand that it is a much more punishable offence to hold unorthodox views and act honestly by them, than to profess orthodox, stringent virtue, and continually blink at the acting against conscience, by secret indulgences!
One day it chanced that she could discuss the point with her mistress.
"You must remember the good of the community always first, girl," Lady Garribardine had said. "If you want to benefit humanity you must not be too much occupied with the individual. For the good of the community certain standards must be kept up, and sensible people should put on blinkers when examining the frailties of human nature. Nature says one thing and civilisation and orthodox morality another; there must logically be an eternal conflict going on between the two and the only chance for souls to achieve orthodox morality is for hypocrisy to assist them by hiding bad examples given when nature has had an outburst and won the game. If you won't conform to these practical rules it is wiser and less harmful to your neighbours for you to go and live in the wilds—I am all for tenue, I am all for the uplifting of the soul where it is possible, and decency and good taste where it is not."
"I see," responded Katherine. "One must in this, as in all other things, look to the end."
"You have indeed said it!" Her Ladyship cried. "That faculty is the quintessence of statesmanship, as it is of wisdom, and one we never see displayed by a radical government!"
As the season went on in London, various peeps at society were afforded Katherine, and as her eyes opened, and the keenness of her understanding developed, she learned many useful lessons.
On rare Saturday afternoons, she visited the museums again with Gerard Strobridge, to her intense delight, and with much pain as well as pleasure to him, and when the big Saturday to Monday parties came down to Blissington, Lady Garribardine often found her secretary invaluable for the entertainment of unavoidable bores.