might have thought of marrying her. But it was after her marriage, and after his own wife's death, about a year afterwards, that his ascendancy over her became marked, that his constant presence at Rozaine began vaguely to irritate Le Mesurier.
He was such a cold, self-righteous, solemn, pompous pedant, and withal such an ass, so shallow, so empty, so null, Le Mesurier felt. His pose of mental superiority was so unwarranted, so odious. He betrayed in a hundred inflections of his voice, in perpetual supercilious upliftings of his eyebrows, the contempt he entertained for Lily's husband, as for a mere eating, drinking, sport-loving animal, without culture, without fineness, without acquirements, but unfairly endowed by Fortune with large estates and a charming wife; a wife who, in other hands, with a wise and discerning helpmeet, might (to use one of Shergold's own irritating catch-words), "have raised the pyramid of self-culture to the highest point." Shergold imagined himself to be like Goethe, to resemble him physically, as well as temperamentally, and in the Character of his mind; and he was constantly adopting, and adapting to the exigencies of the moment, tag-ends of the poet's phrases. He had a deep-seated, intimate conviction—a conviction based not on evidence, not on experience, not on work accomplished, but born, full-fledged, of his own instinctive egotism—that he was, not merely a clever man, not merely a man of uncommon parts, but a Great Man, a Man of transcendent Genius. It was as a Man of Genius that Lily Le Mesurier looked up to him; it was as a Man of Genius that he looked down upon Lily Le Mesurier's husband. And yet Philip, modest enough, and unpretentious, could not help realising in his heart, that, of the two, he himself was, in point of real native intelligence, the better man.
Shergold displayed a silent commiseration for Lily which infuriated Le Mesurier. He taught her to commiserate herself.
