The words were given with slow deprecation: as if he hardly dared to speak them. "What do you think, yourself, about it?" sharply asked the Colonel. "Do you consider yourself a suitable match for Miss Cleeve? In _any_ way? In _any_ way, Mr. Andinnian?" "I am afraid not, sir." "You are _afraid_ not! Good Heavens! Your family--pardon me for alluding to it, Mr. Andinnian, but there are moments in a lifetime, and this is one, when plain speaking becomes a necessity. Your family have but risen from the ranks, sir, as we soldiers say, and not much above the ranks either. Miss Cleeve _is_ Miss Cleeve: my daughter, and a peer's grand-daughter." "It is all true, sir." "So much for that unsuitability. And then we come to means. What are yours, Mr. Andinnian?" The young man lifted his head and his honest grey eyes to the half-affrighted but generally calm face. He could but tell the truth at all times without equivocation. "I fear you will consider my means even more ineligible than my family," he said. "I have my pay and two hundred pounds a year. At my mother's death another two hundred a year will come to me." Colonel Cleeve drew down his lips. "And that is all--in the present and in the future?" "All I can reckon upon with any certainty. When my brother shall succeed Sir Joseph Andinnian, he may do something more for me. My father suggested it in his last testamentary paper: and I think he will do it: I believe he will. But of this I cannot be certain; and in any case it may not be much." Colonel Cleeve paused a moment. He wished the young man would not be so straightforwardly candid, so transparently single-minded, putting himself, as it were, in all honour in his hands. It left the Colonel--the mildest man in the world by nature--less loophole to get into a proper passion. In the midst of it all, he could not help liking the young fellow. "Mr. Andinnian, every word you say only makes the case worse. Two barriers, each in itself insurmountable, lie, by your own showing, between you and my daughter. The bare idea of making her your wife is an insult to her; were it carried into a fact--I condemn myself to speak of so impossible a thing unwillingly--it would blight her life and happiness for ever." Karl's pale face grew red as his coat. "These are harsh words, Colonel Cleeve." "They are true ones, sir: and justifiable. Lucy has been reared in the notions befitting her rank. She has been taught to expect that when she marries her home will be at least as well-appointed as the one she is taken from. My son is a great expense to me and my means are limited as compared with my position--I am plain with you, you see, Mr. Andinnian; you have been so with me--but still we live as our compeers live, and have things in accordance about us. But what could _you_ offer Lucy?--allowing that in point of family you were entitled to mate with her. Why, a lodging in a barracks; a necessity to tramp with you after the regiment at home and abroad."