The only disadvantage of my position is that it give me, in spite of myself, an odd sense of isolation from my kind.  They are looking forward to Easters and Junes and summers, and I am not.  I also have a fatuous feeling of superiority in being in closer touch than they with eternal verities.  I must take care that I do not play too much to the gallery, that I do not grow too conceited over the singularity of my situation, and arrive at the mental attitude of the criminal whose dominant solicitude in connection with his execution was that he should be hanged in his dress clothes.  These reflections brought me to Eccleston Square.

Lady Kynnersley is that type of British matron who has children in fits of absent-mindedness, and to whom their existence is a perpetual shock.  Her main idea in marrying the late Sir Thomas Kynnersley was to associate herself with his political and philanthropic schemes.  She is the born committee woman, to whom a home represents a place where one sleeps and eats in order to maintain the strength required for the performance of committee duties.  Her children have always been outside the sphere of her real interests, but, afflicted, as such women are, with chronic inflammation of the conscience, she had devoted the most scrupulous care to their upbringing.  She formed herself into a society for the protection of her own children, and managed them by means of a committee, which consisted of herself, and of which she was the honorary secretary.  She drew up articles of association and regulations.  If Dale contracted measles, she applied by-law 17.  If Janet slapped Dorothy, by-law 32 was brought into play.  When Dale clamoured for a rocking-horse, she found that the articles of association did not provide for imaginative equitation.  As the children grew up, the committee had from time to time to revise the articles and submit them to the general body for approval.  There were many meetings before the new sections relating to a University career for the boy and the coming out for the girls were satisfactorily drafted.  Once given the effect of law, however, there was no appeal against these provisions.  Both committee and general body were powerless.  Dale certainly owed his methodical habits to his mechanical training, but whence he derived and how he maintained his exuberance and spontaneity has often puzzled me.  He himself accounts for it on the score of heredity, in that an ancestress of his married a highwayman who was hanged at Tyburn under William and Mary.

In person Lady Kynnersley is lean and blanched and grey-haired.  She wears gold spectacles, which stand out oddly against the thin whiteness of her face; she is still a handsome, distinguished woman, who can have, when she chooses, a most gracious manner.  As I, worldling and jester though I am, for some mysterious reason have found favour in the lady’s eyes, she manifests this graciousness whenever we foregather.  Ergo, I like Lady Kynnersley, and would put myself to much inconvenience in order to do her a service.