“I am some seventeen years older than you,” he went on, “and I suppose that the most active part of my life lies in the past; and I don’t know if, putting other things aside, you could care to marry so old a man, especially as I am not rich. Indeed, I feel it presumptuous on my part, seeing what you are and what I am not, to ask you to do so. And yet, Ida, I believe if you could care for me that, with heaven’s blessing, we should be very happy together. I have led a lonely life, and have had little to do with women—once, many years ago, I was engaged, and the matter ended painfully, and that is all. But ever since I first saw your face in the drift five years and more ago, it has haunted me and been with me. Then I came to live here and I have learnt to love you, heaven only knows how much, and I should be ashamed to try to put it into words, for they would sound foolish. All my life is wrapped up in you, and I feel as though, should you see me no more, I could never be a happy man again,” and he paused and looked anxiously at her face, which was set and drawn as though with pain. “I cannot say ‘yes,’ Colonel Quaritch,” she answered at length, in a tone that puzzled him, it was so tender and so unfitted to the words. “I suppose,” he stammered, “I suppose that you do not care for me? Of course, I have no right to expect that you would.” “As I have said that I cannot say ‘yes,’ Colonel Quaritch, do you not think that I had better leave that question unanswered?” she replied in the same soft notes which seemed to draw the heart out of him. “I do not understand,” he went on. “Why?” “Why?” she broke in with a bitter little laugh, “shall I tell you why? Because I am _in pawn!_ Look,” she went on, pointing to the stately towers and the broad lands beyond. “You see this place. _I_ am security for it, I _myself_ in my own person. Had it not been for me it would have been sold over our heads after having descended in our family for all these centuries, put upon the market and sold for what it would fetch, and my old father would have been turned out to die, for it would have killed him. So you see I did what unfortunate women have often been driven to do, I sold myself body and soul; and I got a good price too—thirty thousand pounds!” and suddenly she burst into a flood of tears, and began to sob as though her heart would break. For a moment Harold Quaritch looked on bewildered, not in the least understanding what Ida meant, and then he followed the impulse common to mankind in similar circumstances and took her in his arms. She did not resent the movement, indeed she scarcely seemed to notice it, though to tell the truth, for a moment or two, which to the Colonel seemed the happiest of his life, her head rested on his shoulder. Almost instantly, however, she raised it, freed herself from his embrace and ceased weeping.