"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,