t that rendered any passion he might
entertain an implication of duty as well as of pleasure? Why there
should have been this implication was more than he could say; sometimes
he held himself rather abject, or at least absurdly superstitious, for
seeing it. He didn't know, he could scarcely conceive, of another case
of the same general type in which he would have recognised it. In
foreign countries there were very few ladies of Miss Rooth's intended
profession who would not have regarded it as too strong an order that,
to console them for not being admitted into drawing-rooms, they should
have no offset but the exercise of a virtue in which no one would
believe. This was because in foreign countries actresses were not
admitted into drawing-rooms: that was a pure English drollery,
ministering equally little to real histrionics and to the higher tone of
these resorts. Did the oppressive sanctity which made it a burden to
have to reckon with his young friend come then from her being English?
Peter could recall cases in which that privilege operated as little as
possible as a restriction. It came a great deal from Mrs. Rooth, in whom
he apprehended depths of calculation as to what she might achieve for
her daughter by "working" the idea of a life blameless amid dire
obsessions. Her romantic turn of mind wouldn't in the least prevent her
regarding that idea as a substantial capital, to be laid out to the best
worldly advantage. Miriam's essential irreverence was capable, on a
pretext, of making mince-meat of it--that he was sure of; for the only
capital she recognised was the talent which some day managers and agents
would outbid each other in paying for. Yet as a creature easy at so many
points she was fond of her mother, would do anything to oblige--that
might work in all sorts of ways--and would probably like the loose
slippers of blamelessness quite as well as having to meet some of the
queer high standards of the opposite camp.

Sherringham, I may add, had no desire that she should indulge a
different preference: it was distasteful to him to compute the
probabilities of a young lady's misbehaving for his advantage--that
seemed to him definitely base--and he would have thought himself a
blackguard if, even when a prey to his desire, he had not wished the
thing that was best for the object of it. The thing best for Miriam
might be to become the wife of the man to whose suit she should incline
her ear. That this would be t