a belle in St. Louis and Mr. Blakely a young society beau, the
magnitude of their flirtation had well-nigh stopped her marriage, Miss
Wren saw opportunity for her good offices and, so far from avoiding,
she sought the society of the major's brooding wife. She even felt a
twinge of disappointment when the young officer appeared, and after
the initial thirty-six hours under the commander's roof, rarely went
thither at all. She knew her brother disapproved of him, and thought
it to be because of moral, not military, obliquity. She saw with
instant apprehension his quick interest in Angela and the child's
almost unconscious response. With the solemn conviction of the maiden
who, until past the meridian, had never loved, she looked on Angela as
far too young and immature to think of marrying, yet too shallow, vain
and frivolous, too corrupted, in fact, by that pernicious society
school--not to shrink from flirtations that might mean nothing to the
man but would be damnation to the girl. Even the name of this big,
blue-eyed, fair-skinned young votary of science had much about it that
made her fairly bristle, for she had once been described as an
"austere vestal" by Lieutenant Blake, of the regiment preceding them
at Sandy, the ----th Cavalry--and a mutual friend had told her all
about it--another handicap for Blakely. She had grown, it must be
admitted, somewhat gaunt and forbidding in these later years, a thing
that had stirred certain callow wits to differentiate between the
Misses Wren as Angela and Angular, which, hearing, some few women
reproved but all repeated. Miss Wren, the sister, was in fine a woman
widely honored but little sought. It was Angela that all Camp Sandy
would have met with open arms.

"R-r-robert," began Miss Wren, as the captain unclasped his saber belt
and turned it over to Mickel, his German "striker." She would have
proceeded further, but he held up a warning hand. He had come homeward
angering and ill at ease. Disliking Blakely from the first, a
"ballroom soldier," as he called him, and alienated from him later, he
had heard still further whisperings of the devotions of a chieftain's
daughter at the agency, above all, of the strange infatuation of the
major's wife, and these had warranted, in his opinion, warning words
to his senior subaltern in refusing that gentleman's request to ride
with Angela. "I object to any such attentions--to any meetings
whatsoever," said he, but sooner than give the