Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/149

 saying he had met her on the boat coming home from there); I tried the Argentine colony and the Legation, only to be referred to the Brazilian Embassy; and there, though I am sure they had never heard of her, they were certain that she came from Peru. Until then, I had never realized how many republics there were in South America; I went from Colombia to the Argentine and from Ecuador to Chili. Invariably the first question was: “What was her name before she became Mrs. Sawyer?” And that, of course, I did not know.

There is such a thing as trop de zèle, sometimes hardly distinguishable from making oneself ridiculous. . . “Surely,” I said to Will, “our judgement of this person or that is a better criterion than the bald (and perhaps inaccurate) statement that a person was born here and married there. Connie Maitland has asked us to shew some little kindness to our friend; and I am not ashamed to confess that it seems grudging to insist too much on credentials. In a favourite phrase of your own. Will, she is “good enough” for me; and, if any one says: “I met her at Lady Ann’s,” I should be tempted to answer: “I hope you do not need a better recommendation.”