But at fifty a curious circumstance happened. John Trevor married. To say that he fell in love would perhaps scarcely represent the case. He had a friend who had been in India and all over the world, and who came home to Farafield with a liver-complaint, and a great deal of money, some people said. Trevor at first did not believe very much in the money. “I have enough to live upon,” his friend said; and what more was necessary? No one knew very well how the money had been made--though that it was honestly acquired there was no doubt. He had been a clerk in an office in Farafield first, then because of his good conduct, which everybody had full faith in, and his business qualities (at which everybody laughed), he was sent to London by his employer, and received into an office there, from which he was sent to India, coming home with this fortune, but with worn-out health, to his native place. “Fortune? you can call it a fortune if you like. It is enough to live on,” John Trevor repeated, “that is all I know about it. To be sure that _is_ a fortune: for to have enough for your old days, and not to be compelled to work, what could a man desire more? But poor Rainy will not enjoy it long,” his old school-fellow added regretfully. Rainy was older by five or six years than John Trevor; but fifty-six does not seem old when one is drawing near that age, though it is a respectable antiquity to youth. Rainy’s sister had been a hard-working woman too; she had been a governess, and then had kept a school; then looked after the children of a widowed brother; and during her whole life had discharged the duties of the supernumerary woman in a large family, taking care of everybody who wanted taking care of. When her brother returned to Farafield she had come to him to be his companion and nurse. He gave her a very nice home, everybody said, with much admiration of the brother’s kindness and the sister’s good-luck. They lived in Swallow Street, in one of the old houses, which were warmer and better built than the new ones, and kept two maids, and had everything comfortable, if not handsome, about, them. When poor Rainy died, Miss Rainy had a great deal of business to do which she did not at all understand. She had to refer to John Trevor perpetually in the first week or two, and she was not young any longer, nor ambitious, the good soul, and nobody had been so kind to her brother as John, and they had known each other all their lives. It came about thus quite naturally that they married. To be sure there were a great many people who said that Trevor married Miss Rainy for her money, as if poor old John at fifty had been able to have his choice of all the lovely young maidens of the district. But this was not the case; neither was it for love they married. They married for mutual support and company, not a bad motive after all. If there had been no money in the case, they would have contented themselves in their loneliness; but as