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had come across the photograph of Oliver Desmond.

It was rarely indeed that Barbara Thorne indulged in reverie by day; the night was her time for silence and thought; but now she was so lost in the train of memories aroused by the sight of his portrait—memories which had lost their sharpest sting, and only hurt her now with a dull ache she had even forgotten that an hour ago she had been looking out for somebody—somebody who would never allow the long; lonely day to pass without coming to see her!

Through the open window a flood of sunlight pourcd in and turned Barbara's fair hair to gold. Far off, above and beyond the sombre masses of the evergreen pine forests, a jagged range of mountain peaks, like tossing billows frozen at their height, shone in snowy silhouette against a sky of deep and vivid, cloudless blue.

The scene was fair, but Barbara's eyes were not lifted to dwell on its beauaty; they were brooding on the face of the man she had loved, and—had she ever hated him? Did she hate him now? She did not hear a sound or a step, till a shadow fell across the sunlight, and a man stood on the threshold of the long French window, which was open down to the ground.

Barbara turned with a start, and made a hasty, involuntary movement to push the photograph aside as she sprang up—a movement that, slight, swift, and momentary as it was, yet did not pass unnoticed by the visitor's eye. What, indeed, was ever known to escape the eagle eye of Rick Jeffreys—better known in the neighbourhood of Eden City (which was the flattering appellation bestowed by its builders on the nearest settlement) as "Colonel Jeff"?

He was a tall man, of massive and powerful build, with somewhat harsh features, black hair and beard just touched with grey, and a sallow complexion sunburnt as brown as a berry. According to the prevalent fashion in those latitudes, he wore truculent-looking boots up to his knees, and a big sombrero hat slouched over his brow. There was a stern, hard expression about his face, except when he smiled or looked at Barbara Thorne. He did not look stern now, as she came quickly to meet him, and welcomed him with a smile that was perhaps less bright, a blush that was certainly deeper than usual. He spoke no word of greeting at first, only looked at her as if her face were a magnet that drew and held his eyes, then put his arm gently round her waist and bent his dark head to her fair one, and kissed her with infinite tenderness.

Barbara yielded to his caress with the soft yielding of a woman who loves. She did not belong to the class of those who, deceived by one, distrust all thenceforth—who hate all men for one false one's sake. And the time had come which she had never thought to see, when she—even she, Barbara Thorne, the deserted, slighted, jilted, held up to the insult of the world's pity—yet trusted, loved again. For this man's devotion had been balm to her bruised spirit—a healing balsam poured into the still smarting wounds of her once crushed and outraged pride.

"All alone, my little lady?" he said, softly.

"Yes; Tom and Hatty went off this morning."

"Been lonesome?"

"Oh, no; I've had plenty to keep me brisk and busy."

Colonel Jeff cast a glance at the table, at the photograph which there face upwards. "And who have you there?" he inquired, but not suspiciously. Barbara conquered a foolish impulse to put out her hand to intercept his as he went to pick up the portrait.

He glanced at it first easily, then keenly, and his dark brows lowered ominously. Colonel Jeff did not look like a person to offend—if once had the choiee.

"You are thinking of that blackguard still?" he said; and his tone anger and pain struggled equally matched.

"I found that photograph by chance while I was looking over a drawer full of old papers," she replied, answering the spirit rather than the letter of his words.

"And you were looking at it as if—as if—it was all the world to you!" he retorted.

"My looks belied me, then. It is a memory only—and a painful one," she said, with the shightest shade of a tremor in her sweet voice.

"Only a memory?" fixing the stern questioning of his piercing eyes upon her.

"If 't were more, should I be what I am to you?" she replied, meeting his look frankly.

"What are you to me?" he demanded. The words might have sounded brutal had the tone been different, but though they were harshly spoken, they bore no suggestion of denial or rebuff, no faintest hint of insulting disclaimer. "You know," he continued, "we both know, that you're the one woman in the world to me—but what more? What beyond that? Are you the woman who cares for me?"