"But I do hope we shall meet again, for you are so sympathetic and kind."
She bade him good day, and nodded with a friendly smile, but made no answer to the repeated expression of his hope, and she hastened away.
Heron could not endure walking alone just then. He hailed a hansom and disappeared.
"How vain men are!" Minola thought as she went her way. "How egotistical they all are!" Of course she assumed herself to have obtained a complete knowledge of all the characters of men. "How egotistic he is! Of course he tells his whole story to every woman he meets. Lucy Money no doubt has it by heart."
She did not remember for the moment that her own favorite hero was likewise somewhat egotistical and effusive, and that he was very apt to pour out the story of his wrongs into the ear of any sympathetic woman. But she was disappointed with herself and her friend just now, and was not in a mood to make perfectly reasonable comparisons.
CHAPTER VIII.
A "HELPER OF UNHAPPY MEN."
Mrs. Money had one great object in life. At least, if it was not an object defined and set out before her, it was an instinct: it was to make people happy. She could not rest without trying to make people happy. The motherly instinct, which in other women is satisfied by rushing at babies wherever they are to be seen, and ministering to them, and fondling them, and talking pigeon-English to them, exuberated in her so far as to set her trying to do the mother's part for all men and women who came within her range, even when their years far exceeded hers. There was one great advantage to herself personally in this: it kept her content in what had come to be her own sphere. One cannot go meddling in the affairs of duchesses and countesses, and Ministers of State, with whatever kindly desire of setting everything to rights and making them all happy. People of that class give themselves such haughty airs that they would rather remain unhappy in their own way than obtain felicity at the hand of some person of inferior station. So Mrs. Money believed; and perhaps one secret cause of her dislike to the aristocracy (along with the avowed conviction that the aristocratic system had somehow misprized and interfered with her husband) was the feeling that if she were among them, they would not allow her to do anything for them. She therefore maintained a circle of which she herself was the queen, and patroness, and Lady Bountiful. She busied herself about everybody's affairs, and was kind to everybody, without any feeling of delight in the mere work of patronizing, but out of a sheer pleasure in trying to make people happy. Naturally she made mistakes, and the general system of her social circle worked so as to occasion a continual change, a passing away of old friends and coming in of new. As young men rose in the world and became independent, as girls got married and came to consider themselves supreme in their own sphere, they tended to move away from Mrs. Money's influence. Even the grateful and the generous could not always avoid this. For beginners in any path of life she was the specially appointed helper and friend; and next to these she might be called the patron saint of failures. In her circle were young poets, painters, lawyers, novelists, preachers, ambitious men looking out for seats in Parliament, or beginners in Parliament; also there were the gray old poets whom no one read; the painters who could not get their pictures exhibited or bought; the men who were in Parliament ten or twenty years ago, and got out and never could get in again; and the inventors who could not impress any government or capitalist with a sense of the value of their discoveries. No front-rank, successful person of any kind was usually to be found in Mrs. Money's rooms. Her guests were the youths who were putting their armor on for the battle, and the worn-out campaigners who had put it off defeated.
Naturally, when Minola Grey came in Mrs. Money's way, the sympathy and interest of the kindly lady were quickened to their keenest. This beautiful, motherless, fatherless, proud, lonely girl—not so old as her own Theresa, not older than her own Lucy—living by herself, or almost by herself, in gloomy lodgings in the heart of London—how could she fail to be an object of Mrs. Money's deep concern? Of course Mrs. Money must look into all her affairs, and find out whether she was poor; and in what sort of way she was living; and whether the people with whom she lodged were kind to her.
Mary Blanchet's pride of heart can hardly be described when an open carriage, with a pair of splendid grays, stopped at the door of the house in the no-thoroughfare street, and a footman got down and knocked; and it finally appeared that Mrs. Money, Miss Money, and Miss Lucy Money had called to see Miss Grey. Miss Grey, as it happened, was not at home, although the servant at first supposed that she was; and thus the three ladies were shown into Minola's sitting-room, and there almost instantly captured by Miss Blanchet. We say "almost" because there was an interval long enough for Lucy to dart about the room from point to point, taking up a book here, a piece of music there, an engraving, a photograph, or a flower, and pronouncing everything delightful. The room was old-fashioned, spacious, and solid, very unlike the tiny apartments of the ordinary West End lodging; and, what with the flowers and the books, it really looked rather an attractive place to enthusiastic eyes. Miss Money kept her eyes on the ground for the most part, and professed to take little notice of the ordinary adornments of rooms; for Miss Money was a saint, and was furthermore engaged to a man not far from her father's years, who, having made a great deal of money at the Parliamentary bar, was now thinking of entering the Church, and had already set about the building of a temple of mediæval style, in the progress of which Miss Money naturally was deeply interested.