Why--for many a long year he would not earn more than enough to pay his mess-bills and feed his horses.

Not in England certainly....

Was he to ask Lucille to leave her luxurious home in a splendid mansion and live in a subaltern's four-roomed hut in the plains in India?
(Even if he could scrape into the Indian army so as to live on his pay--more or less.) Grumper, her guardian, and executor of the late Bishop's will, might have very different views for her.

Why, she might even be his heiress--he was very fond of her, the daughter of his lifelong friend and kinsman.

Fancy a pauper making up to a very rich girl--if it came to her being that, which he devoutly hoped it would not.