Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/58

50 him. Poor Sherringham's scheme for getting on had contained no proviso against falling in love, but it had embodied an important clause on the subject of surprises. It was always a surprise to fall in love, especially if one were looking out for it; so this contingency had not been worth official paper. But it became a man who respected the service he had undertaken for the State to be on his guard against predicaments from which the only issue was the rigour of matrimony. An ambitious diplomatist would probably be wise to marry, but only with his eyes very much open. That was the fatal surprise—to be led to the altar in a dream. Sherringham's view of the proprieties attached to such a step was high and strict; and if he held that a man in his position was, especially as the position improved, essentially a representative of the greatness of his country, he considered that the wife of such a personage would exercise in her degree (for instance, at a foreign court) a function no less symbolic. She would always be, in short, a very important quantity, and the scene was strewn with illustrations of this general truth. She might be such a help and she might be such a blight that common prudence required that one should test her in advance. Sherringham had seen women in the career who were stupid or vulgar make a mess of things—it was enough to wring your heart. Then he had his positive idea of the perfect ambassadress, the full-blown lily of the future; and with this idea Miriam Rooth presented no analogy whatever.

The girl had described herself with characteristic directness as "all right"; and so she might be, so she assuredly was: only all right for what? He had divined that she was not