a stab in the back from the
hand that should have shielded and cherished her.

How strange it seemed to her to-day to think she had outlived it
all--the love, the anguish, the bitterness, which once had seemed
undying! There was nothing to disturb her reverie; she was alone, had
been alone all day, and yet not lonely, albeit this solitary Californian
ranch, in a secluded valley amongst the foot-hills of the Sierras, was a
lonesome-looking place enough. But Barbara had been too busy all day to
sit down and realize the loneliness. She lived on the Saucel Ranch with
her married brother and his wife, she and her sister-in-law doing all
the housework between them--servants or "helps" being unattainable
luxuries in those parts. Mr. and Mrs. Thorne had gone out for all the
day and all the night; a nervous woman might well have shrunk from being
thus left alone and unprotected in such a place; but if Barbara had ever
been troubled with the nineteenth century malady of "nerves," she had
lived it down since she had taken up her abode on the Saucel Ranch. Her
hands were always full. Even now, her day's task done, she had set
herself to "improve the shining hour" by "tidying-up" the bureau drawer,
in which she 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 poured 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
beauty; 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, in