ic and the country."

"He is rich," she thought, "and he is clever and earnest, in spite of
his egotism. Of course he will have a career, and be successful. I
thought that he was poor and broken down, and that I was doing him a
kindness by showing sympathy with him."

They went away together, and Heron, delighted with her encouragement
and her intelligence, unfolded splendid plans of what he was to do. But
Minola somehow entered less cordially into them than she had done
before, and Mr. Heron at last became ashamed of talking so much about
himself.

"I hope we shall meet again," he said as she stopped significantly at
one of the gates leading out of the park, to intimate that now their
roads were separating. "I wish you would allow me to call and see you.
I do hope you won't think me odd, or that I am presuming on your
kindness. I am a semi-barbarian, you know--have been so long out of
civilization--and I haven't any idea of the ways of the polite world."

"Nor I," said Minola. "I have come from utter barbarism--from a country
town."

"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,