"I want to know how it is all to end," were the first distinct words Caroline uttered. "Am I to stop here till I die?"
A question difficult for Sara to answer. "Is Mark doing nothing?" she asked.
"He is doing nothing. He can't do anything while that business of the Wheal Bang hangs over him. If that were settled, there are fifty things he might get into. And if it can't be settled, we may both of us as well die at once as be famished to death. For that's what it would come to. Those poor creatures that shut themselves up with the fumes of charcoal are not so much to blame, after all."
"Caroline!"
"Well, I mean it," returned Caroline, a sullen tone beginning to mingle with her sobs. "It is all very well for you to exclaim 'Caroline!' as if I were mad; but you don't know what sorrow is. Nobody does until poverty comes."
Sara thought that there were worse sorrows to be borne in the world than poverty. And she was right; bad as poverty, to those unaccustomed to it, undoubtedly is. "What can I do for you?" she gently asked.
"Here we are, buried alive, and nobody comes near us! Sara, if you only knew how I yearn for a home face!--how I lie and cry for it!"
"Mark--and you also--said I must not come, lest it might lead to discovery."
"Neither must you, I suppose. At least, not often. But sometimes I think it would be well if discovery happened. There'd be an end to this uncertainty at any rate. What is Mark to do if the thing can't get settled?"
She asked the question in strange earnestness, and Sara was struck with the yearning beauty of the lifted face, of the wasting form. The violet eyes were larger than of yore, the cheeks were of a delicate crimson, and the hands were long and white and thin.