"I don't think much of money," he said.
"Still it is essential to comfort, Mr. Gilmore."
"What I mean to say is, that I am the last man in the world to insist upon that kind of thing, or to appear to triumph because my income is larger than another man's." Miss Marrable was now quite sure that Mr. Gilmore was a gentleman. "But if the match is to be broken off—"
"I cannot say that it will be broken off."
"But it may be?"
"Certainly it is possible. There are difficulties which may necessarily separate them."
"If it be so, my feelings will be the same as they have always been since I first knew her. That is all that I have got to say."
Then she told him pretty nearly everything. She said nothing of the money which Walter Marrable would have inherited had it not been for Colonel Marrable's iniquity; but she did tell him that the young people would have no income except the Captain's pay, and poor Mary's little fifty pounds a-year; and she went on to explain that, as far as she was concerned, and as far as her cousin the clergyman was concerned, everything would be done to prevent a marriage so disastrous as that in question, and the prospect of a life with so little of allurement as that of the wife of a poor soldier in India. At the same time she bade him remember that Mary Lowther was a girl very apt to follow her own judgment, and that she was for the present absolutely devoted to her cousin. "I think it will be broken off," she said. "That is my opinion. I don't think it can go on. But it is he that will do it; and for a time she will suffer greatly."
"Then I will wait," said Mr. Gilmore. "I will go home, and wait again. If there be a chance, I can live and hope."
"God grant that you may not hope in vain!"