ency. Colonel Frost had taken a big, cool, roomy house,
surrounded by spacious grounds down in Malate and close to the plashing
waters of the bay. Duties kept him early and late at his office in the
walled city; but every evening, after the drive and dinner, callers came
thronging in, and all Witchie's witcheries were called into play to charm
them into blindness and to cover Nita's fitful and nervous moods, now
almost painfully apparent. Frost's face was at times a thundercloud, and
army circles within the outer circle of Manila saw plainly that all was
not harmony betwixt that veteran Benedict and that fragile, fluttering,
baby wife. The bloom of Nita's beauty was gone. She looked wan, white,
even haggard. She had refused to leave Hongkong or come to Manila until
Margaret's arrival, then flew to the shelter of that sisterly wing. Frank
Garrison had been occupying a room under the same roof with his General,
but both General and aide-de-camp were now much afield, and Frank spent
far more days and nights along the line of blockhouses than he did at
home. The coming of his wife was unannounced and utterly unlooked for.
"Did I consult my husband!" she exclaimed in surprise, when asked the
question one day by the wife of a veteran field officer. "Merciful
heaven, Mrs. Lenox, there was no time for that except by cable, and at
four dollars a word. No! If any doubt of what Frank Garrison will say or
do exists in my mind I go and do the thing at once, then the doubt is
settled. If he approve, well and good; if he doesn't--well, then I've had
my fun anyway."

But it made little difference what Frank Garrison might think, say or do
when Nita's need came in question. It was for Nita that Margaret Garrison
so suddenly quitted the Presidio and hastened to Hawaii. It was for her
sake, to be her counsel and protection, the elder sister had braved
refusal, difficulties, criticism, even Armstrong's open suspicion and
dislike, to take that long voyage to a hostile clime. That she braved,
too, her husband's displeasure was not a matter of sufficient weight to
merit consideration. She was there to help Nita; and until that hapless
child were freed from a peril that, ever threatening, seemed sapping her
very life, Margaret Garrison meant to stay.

For the letter that came by way of Honolulu had told the elder sister of
increasing jealousy and suspicion on the colonel's part, of his dreadful
rage at Yokohama on learning that even there--the