Barbara felt astonished, though she was very reposeful. "I really don't see why it should be. Mrs. Devine is there. We have to entertain a good deal in the city, and are glad to get away to the mountains for quietness occasionally." "But what connection can you possibly have with Mrs. Devine?" "I am," said Barbara, quietly, "merely her sister. I have always lived with her." Brooke positively gasped. "And you never told me!" "Why should I? You never asked me, and I fancied everybody knew." Brooke stood silent a moment, with the fingers of one hand closed, and the blood in his face, then he turned, as the girl moved, and they went back along the little rough rail together. "Of course, I can think of no reason," he said, quietly. "Still, the news astonished me." Barbara glanced away from him. There was only one way in which she could account for his evident concern at what she had told him, and the deduction she made was not altogether unpleasant to her, though, as it happened, it was not the correct one. The man was, as he had told her, without friends or dollars, but she knew that men with his capacities do not always remain poor in that country, and there were qualities which had gained her appreciation in him, while it had not dawned on her that there might also be others which could only meet with her disapprobation. "If you had called at the address I gave you in Vancouver, you would have known exactly who I was, but there is now nothing to prevent you coming to the ranch," she said. Brooke glanced down somewhat grimly at his hard, scarred hands and his clothes, and a faint flush crept into the girl's face. "Have I to remind you again that you are not in the English valley?" she said. "Mr. Devine, at least, is rather proud of the fact that he once earned his living with the shovel and the drill." "I am not sure that the one you imagine is my only reason for feeling a trifle diffident about presenting myself at Mr. Devine's house," said Brooke, very slowly. Barbara looked at him with a little imperious smile. "I did not ask you for any at all. I merely suggested that if you wished to come we should be pleased to see you at the ranch." Brooke made her a little inclination, and said nothing, until, when another white-clad figure appeared among the pines, the girl turned to him. "That is Mrs. Devine," she said. "Shall I present you?" Brooke stopped abruptly, with, as the girl noticed once more, a very curious expression in his face. He meant to use whatever means were available against Devine, but he could not profit by a woman's kindness to creep into his adversary's house. "No," he said, almost harshly. "Not to-night. It would be a pleasure--another time." Barbara looked at him with big, grave eyes, and the faintest suggestion of color in her cheek. "Very well," she said. "I need not detain you."