Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/145

 "The only name that I could give your Majesty with perfect confidence would be that of my good friend Max von Sempach," said he, with an admirable air of honesty, but, as I thought, a covert gleam of amusement in his deep-set eyes. I very nearly laughed. The only man fit for the Embassy, except himself, was Count Max! And if Count Max went, of course the Countess would go with him; equally of course the King must stay in Forstadt. I saw Wetter looking at me keenly out of the corner of his eye; it did not suit me that he should read my thoughts this time. I appeared to have no suspicion of the good faith of his suggestion, and said, with an air of surprise:

"Max von Sempach! Why, how is he suitable?"

With great gravity he gave me many reasons, proving not that Max was very suitable, but that everybody else was profoundly unsuitable, except the unmentioned candidate whose name was so well understood between us.

"These," I observed, "would seem to be reasons for looking elsewhere—I mean to the other side—for a suitable man."

He did not trouble to argue that with me. He knew that his was not the voice to which I should listen.

"If your Majesty comes to that conclusion, my friends and I will be disappointed," he said, "but we must accept your decision."

There was much to like in Wetter. Men are not insincere merely because they are ambitious, dishonest merely because they are given to intrigue, selfish merely because they ask places for themselves. There is a grossness of moral fibre not in itself a good