"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 lay 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 one had the choice. "You are thinking of that blackguard still?" he said; and in 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 slightest shade of a tremor in her sweet voice. "Only a memory?" fixing the stern questioning of his piercing eyes upon her. "If it 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?" [Illustration: "HE GLANCED AT IT."] "For you more than for all the world beside." "More than for----?" He cast a frowning glance at the photograph. "Immeasurably more," she answered steadily, and the unconquerable truth in her forced her to add the word, "to-day!" "To-day?" he echoed, with mingled anger and reluctant admiration. "Barbara, you are too honest to deny----" He paused with a quick indrawing of the breath and setting of the teeth. "To deny the past?" her soft voice interposed as he paused. "Yes! I could never deny it! You know, Rick, you always knew, that I could not give you my yesterdays!" "Barbara, I am jealous of those yesterdays," he said, after a silence. "Why begrudge the yesterdays," she pleaded, "when all the to-morrows are yours?" His dark eyes kindled with a deep and tender glow. "All? All? None to share with me, or rob me? All mine?" He framed her delicate fair face between his big brown hands, and held it thus gently upturned to his as he gazed intently into it. "Barbara," he added, "do you know it would be a bad thing for any man who came between me and you?" "No one could," she assured him earnestly. Colonel Jeff clasped her in his strong arms. "Is that so, indeed, my darling? my Barbara! my own one love," he whispered, pressing her to his heart.