The school-room door, close by, had opened with a burst, and Miss Kate Dancox was flying down the stairs—­her usual progress the minute lessons were over.  Harry strolled into the room.  The governess was putting the littered table straight.

“Any admission, ma’am?” cried he quaintly, making for a chair.  “I should like to ask leave to sit down for a bit.”

Alice West laughed, and stirred the fire by way of welcome; he was a very rare visitor to the school-room.  The blaze, mingling with the rays of the setting sun that streamed in at the window, played upon her sweet face and silky brown hair, lighted up the bright winter dress she wore, and the bow of pink ribbon that fastened the white lace round her slender, pretty throat.

“Are you so much in need of a seat?” she laughingly asked.

“Indeed I am,” was the semi-grave response.  “I have had a shock.”

“A very sharp one, sir?”

“Sharp as steel.  Really and truly,” he went on in a different tone, as he left the chair and stood up by the table facing her; “I have just heard news that may affect my whole future life; may change me from a rich man to a poor one.”

“Oh, Mr. Carradyne!” Her manner had changed now.

“I was the destined inheritor, as you know—­for I’m sure nobody has been reticent upon the subject—­of these broad lands,” with a sweep of the hand towards the plains outside.  “Captain Monk is now pleased to inform me that he thinks of substituting for me Mrs. Hamlyn’s child.”

“But would not that be very unjust?”

“Hardly fair—­as it seems to me.  Considering that my good uncle obliged me to give up my own prospects for it.”

She stood, her hands clasped in sympathy, her face full of earnest sadness.  “How unkind!  Why, it would be cruel!”

“Well, I confess I felt it to be so at the first blow.  But, standing at the outside window yonder to pull myself together, a ray or two of light crept in, showing me that it may be for the best after all.  ’Whatever is, is right,’ you know.”

“Yes,” she slowly said—­“if you can think so.  But, Mr. Carradyne, should you not have anything at all?—­anything to live upon after Captain Monk’s death?”

“Just a trifle, I calculate, as the Americans say—­and it is calculating I have been—­that I need not altogether starve.  Would you like to know how much it will be?”

“Oh, please don’t laugh at me!”—­for it suddenly struck the girl that he was laughing, perhaps in reproof, and that she had spoken too freely.  “I ought not to have asked that; I was not thinking—­I was too sorry to think.”

“But I may as well tell you, if you don’t mind.  I have a very pretty little place, which you have seen and heard of, called by that delectable title Peacock’s Range—­”

“Is Peacock’s Range yours?” she interrupted, in surprise.  “I thought it belonged to Mr. Peveril.”

“Peacock’s Range is mine and was my father’s before me, Miss Alice.  It was leased to Peveril for a term of years, but I fancy he would be glad to give it up to-morrow.  Well, I have Peacock’s Range and about four hundred pounds a-year.”