“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—so 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.”
Her face brightened. “Then you need not talk about starving,” she said, gaily.
“And, later, I shall have altogether about a thousand a-year. Though I hope it will be very long before it falls to me. Do you think two people might venture to set up at Peacock’s Range, and keep, say, a couple of servants upon four hundred a-year? Could they exist upon it?”
“Oh, dear, yes,” she answered eagerly, quite unconscious of his drift. “Did you mean yourself and some friend?”