"Well, it's about myself. I have been awfully hard hit this last week at Newmarket, you know."
"Yes, so you told me. I am so sorry, darling." But she did not care much as long as he was with her and was kind to her—nothing else signified much to her.
"Yes, but I am pretty well broke this time—I had to go to John again. He is an awfully good fellow, is old John; he has paid everything up for me. But I've had to promise to give up racing, and now I've got to live on my pay."
"I could lend you fifty pounds."
"Fifty pounds! pooh! what nonsense! What would be the good of fifty pounds to me?"
He said it rather ungraciously, perhaps, and her eyes filled with tears. When a man does not love a woman, her little childish offers of help do not touch him as they would if he loved her. He would not have taken five thousand from her, yet he was angry with her for talking of fifty pounds.
"What I wanted to say to you, Helen, was that, of course, now I am so hard up it's no good thinking of—of marrying—or anything of that kind; and don't you think it would be happiest if you and I—I mean, wisest for us both—for you, of course, principally——"
"What!" She lifted her head sharply. She saw what he meant at once. A wild terror filled her heart. "You mean that you want to throw me over!" she said, breathlessly.
"My dear child, do be reasonable. Throw you over! of course not—but what is it all to lead to? How can we possibly marry? It was bad enough before, when I had my few hundreds a year. But now even that is gone. A captain in a line regiment is not exactly in a position to marry. Why, I shall hardly be able to keep myself, far less a wife too. I cannot drag you down to starvation, Helen; it would not be right or honourable to continue to bind you to my broken fortunes."
She was standing up now before him very white and very resolute.