’You have a house of your own, we have none. You have land that no man can take from you, and you can at least dig that and live on its produce. But my mother and I have nothing; no house, no land, no money. We eat the bread of charity, and how long is it to last? Harry, I ask you?’ He was silent, engaged on his cravat. It offended his delicacy to be seen and to converse with a lady without his cravat. ’You do not answer me, Harry; you are not going to desert me now I am down. If you had been poor and an outcast, would not I have taken you, though I were wealthy?’ ’But there is the rub,’ said the Captain, interrupting her. ’If I were rich I would share it with you and welcome, but I am not rich; I am miserably poor, hardly able to keep my head out of a debtor’s prison.’ ’Harry, I do not mind that. You are bound to me; you cannot desert me in my misery. No, I know you too well. You are too good, too noble, too true a gentleman. I cannot, I will not believe it. Take me as I am. We can but be poor together, and I will work as your slave. With love labour is light, and poverty is made rich.’ ’That is rather a pretty sentiment, Orange, but it is impracticable.’ ’It is not impracticable. Try me.’ ’That is absurd. I cannot try you, and, if the experiment fails, dissolve the partnership.’ She was silent, and looked him full in the face. Then her feelings overcame her. She stretched out her arms to him. ’Harry,’ she gasped, ’Harry, I love you!’ He did not put out his arms to encircle her, to take her to his heart; but he put his hand to his pipe and began to scrape out the ashes with a bit of stick—a toothpick that was on the mantelpiece. ’Be reasonable, Orange; it is impossible for us to marry now. There is this terrible scandal about Ophir barring it for one thing; there is my poverty for another. We must wait.’ ’I knew it,’ she said, relieved; ’I knew the delay was for a time only. But, Harry, in the meanwhile I have no home. Where am I to live? What roof is to cover me from the rain and the snow? Where am I to get food to put in my mouth, whence the clothes to cover me? Whilst you are waiting for Ophir to be forgotten, I am starving.’ ’This calls for consideration,’ he said, still cleaning his pipe; and now he blew through it, to assure himself that the passage was clear. ’Harry, you have an aunt at Penzance, take me to her. I will live with her a few years, till this trouble about Ophir is passed, and then you shall marry me from her house.’ ’That is not possible, Orange. My aunt strongly disapproved of my engagement. She is a most bigoted Catholic, and could not endure the thought of my taking a Protestant to wife.’ ’I will be a Catholic; I do not care.’