“I have just spent an hour with Mr. Alton and a lawyer, and have something of importance to tell you,” he said.

“I am listening,” said the girl languidly, though Deringham fancied there were signs of a sudden intentness in her face.

“We will commence at the beginning.  Alton appears to have been doubtful respecting his right to Carnaby, and seems to have felt in the first place that it would not be fitting for him to receive as a favour what was his father’s by right.  I do not know that many men would have regarded it in that light.”

“I think,” said the girl with a little quickening of her pulses, “that Mr. Alton’s view was right!”

“Well,” said Deringham, with a little smile that seemed to indicate that the point was not important, “that brings us to his other motive, which displays a very creditable feeling.  Tristan Alton, as you know, only relented upon his deathbed, when, as I pointed out to our kinsman, his senses were, in the opinion even of those who signed his will, a trifle clouded, and Alton was reluctant to profit by a half-delirious fancy which deprived us, or to be more literal, you, of what was virtually your own.  As I told him no man in the possession of all his wits would have made such a will, and there was a probability that it could he successfully contested.”

“Then I think you blundered, father,” said the girl.

Deringham raised his hand as though to indicate that he did not purpose to discuss the question.  “I have been trying to show you that Alton never regarded Carnaby as his.  You follow me?”

“No.  I go farther,” said the girl with a curious smile.  “All that you have told me was quite clear to me some while ago.”

“Now we come to the present.  Alton has proved to myself and the lawyer that he is solvent.  That is if he sold everything he could just pay his debts, but because he does not intend to sell, he stands figuratively speaking with his back to the wall, and appears to consider that financial ruin may overtake him.  That being so he has while he has the power made over all his rights in Carnaby to you.”

Alice Deringham rose up with a little gasp, quivering.  “Father,” she said in a strained voice, “I don’t think I can forgive you.”

Deringham smiled deprecatingly.  “I think that is beside the point,” he said.  “It seems to me that Alton has acted most becomingly, and if he survives his difficulties we could, of course, come to some amicable understanding with him respecting the partition of the property.”

The girl’s face grew a trifle plainer, for one word had an ominous ring.

“There is more than you have told me,” and once more it struck her that Deringham was curiously haggard.

“Well,” he said, “life is always a trifle uncertain, and Alton has twice met with disaster in the ranges.”

The girl stood still looking at him steadily with a vague terror in her eyes.  Then she said slowly, “And I am the mistress of all the Carnaby property.  It is mine to do what I like with.  I could borrow money upon it, or sell it?”