There is just enough truth in most proverbs to make them thoroughly disagreeable. Take, for instance, the saying that wealth is not happiness. Of course it is not, any more than food and lodging, shoes and clothing, which are the ultimate forms of wealth, can be called happiness. But surely, wealth and all that wealth gives constitute a barrier against annoyance, mental and physical, which has almost as much to do with the maintenance of happiness in the end, as "climate and the affections." The demonstration is a simple one. Poverty can of itself under certain circumstances be a source of unhappiness. The possession of riches therefore is a barrier against the possibility of at least one sort of misery and relatively increases the chances of being happy on the whole. It is tolerably certain, that, without money, John Darche would have been little short of insufferable, and that his wife would have been chief among the sufferers. The presence of a great fortune preserved the equilibrium and produced upon outsiders the impression of real felicity. Nevertheless, both Vanbrugh and Dolly Maylands, as has been seen, considered the fortune unsafe and apparent peace problematic. They were among the most intimate friends of the Darche household and were certainly better able to judge of the state of affairs than the majority. They had doubtless perceived in the domestic atmosphere something of that sultriness which foreruns a storm and sometimes precedes an earthquake, and being very much in sympathy with each other, in spite of the continual chaffing which formed the basis of their conversation, they had both begun to notice the signs of bad weather very nearly at the same time.