There would be not only no merit, but positive disgrace, in giving up his wardenship, if he were not prepared to meet the world without it.

Yes, he must from this time forward bound all his human wishes for himself and his daughter to the poor extent of so limited an income.

He knew he had not thought sufficiently of this, that he had been carried away by enthusiasm, and had hitherto not brought home to himself the full reality of his position.
He thought most about his daughter, naturally.

It was true that she was engaged, and he knew enough of his proposed son-in-law to be sure that his own altered circumstances would make no obstacle to such a marriage; nay, he was sure that the very fact of his poverty would induce Bold more anxiously to press the matter; but he disliked counting on Bold in this emergency, brought on, as it had been, by his doing.

He did not like saying to himself, Bold has turned me out of my house and income, and, therefore, he must relieve me of my daughter; he preferred reckoning on Eleanor as the companion of his poverty and exile,--as the sharer of his small income.
Some modest provision for his daughter had been long since made.