No such considerations as these, however, would have affected the company who gathered round Mrs. Money in the out-of-season evenings, or could have been appreciated by them. They were, for the most part, entirely out of Mr. Money's line. He came among them irregularly and at intervals; and if he found there any man or woman he knew or was taken with, he talked to him or her a good deal, and perhaps, if it were a man, he carried him and one or two others off to his own study or smoking-room, where they discoursed at their ease. Sometimes Lucelet was sent to her papa, if he was not making his appearance in the drawing-room, to beg him to accomplish some such act of timely intervention. Somebody, perhaps, presented himself among Mrs. Money's guests who was rather too solid, or grave, or scientific, or political, to care for the general company, and to be of any social benefit to them; or some one, as we have said, in whose eyes Mr. Money would be a celebrity, and Mrs. Money's guests counted for nothing. Then Lucy went for her father, if he was in the house, and drew him forth. He was wonderfully genial with his womankind. They might disturb him at any moment and in any way they chose. He seemed to have as little idea of grumbling if they disturbed him as a Newfoundland dog would have of snapping at his master's children if they insisted on rousing him up from his doze in the sun.
Mr. Money talked very frankly of his daughters and their prospects sometimes.
"My girls are going to marry any one they like," he would often say; "the poorer the better, so far as I am concerned, so long as they like the girls and the girls like them." As chance would have it, a rich man fell in love with Theresa, and she, in her quiet, sanctimonious way, loved him, and that was settled.
"Now, Lucelet, look out for yourself," Mr. Money would, say to his blushing daughter. "If you fall in love with some fine young fellow, I don't care if he hasn't sixpence. Only be sure, Mrs. Lucelet, that you are in love with him, and that he is in love with you, and not with your expectations."
Lucelet generally smiled and saucily tossed her head, as one who should say that she considered herself a person quite qualified to make an impression without the help of any expectations.
"I sometimes wish the right man would come along, Lucelet," Mr. Money said one day, throwing his arm round his pretty daughter's shoulder, and drawing her to him.
"Papa! do you want to get rid of me so soon? I wonder at you. I know I don't want to get rid of you."
"No, no, dear; it isn't that. Never mind. Where's your mamma? Just run and ask her"—and Mr. Money started something else, and put an end to the conversation.
Mr. Money's ideas with regard to the future of his daughters did not fail to become known among his acquaintances in general, and would doubtless have drawn young men in goodly numbers around his home, even if Lucelet were far less pretty than she really was. But in any case Mrs. Money loved to be friendly to young people, and her less formal parties were largely attended, almost always, by the young. Miss Theresa's future husband did not come there often. He had known the family chiefly through Mr. Money and Parliament; and, coming once to dine with Mr. Money, he fell fairly in love with the dove-like eyes and saintly ways of Theresa. Theresa was therefore what her father would have called "out of the swim." She looked tolerantly upon her mother's little gatherings of poets en herbe, artists who were great to their friends, patriots hunting for constituencies, orators who had not yet caught the speaker's eye, and persons who had tried success in all these various paths and failed. She looked on them tolerantly, but her soul was not in them; it floated above them in a purer atmosphere. It was now, indeed, floating among the spires of the church which her lover was to build.
One peculiarity seemed common to the guests whom Mrs. Money gathered around her. On any subject in which they felt the slightest interest they never felt the slightest doubt. The air they breathed was that of conviction; the language they talked was that of dogma. The men and women they knew were the greatest, most gifted, and most beautiful in the world; the men and women they did not know were nothing—were beneath contempt. Every one had what Lowell calls an "I-turn-the-crank-of-the-universe air." In that charmed circle every one was either a genius destined yet to move the world, or a genius too great for the dull, unworthy world to comprehend. It was a happy circle, where success or failure came to just the same.