or those who are a long way off. But
Mr. Money was a man of mark in London, as well as in St. Petersburg and
New York. Therein the foreigners found themselves right. Yet Mr.
Money's position was somewhat peculiar for all that, in a manner no
stranger could well appreciate. The Cabinet minister did not ask Mr.
Money to meet his friend at dinner; or, at all events, would never have
been able to say to his friend, "Money? Oh, yes! Of course you ought to
know him. He is coming to-morrow to dine with us. Won't you come and
meet him?" The most the Cabinet minister would do would be to get up a
little dinner party, suitably adjusted for the express purpose of
bringing his friend and Mr. Money together. It would be too much to say
that Mr. Money was under a cloud. There rather seemed to be a sort of
faint idea abroad that he ought to be, or some day would be, under a
cloud, no one knew why.

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