Even before they were married, Regina knew that after a few short weeks spent in the home-like, elegant quarters at the arsenal, they must leave the ease and luxuries of civilization for the wilds of some frontier country. But Regina was content to reign over the limited number of hearts to be found in a frontier's camp, as she had reigned over her train of admirers in the ball-room and at the watering-places; and, to the delight of her husband, she uttered no word of complaint when an order from the War Department sent them to an adobe-built fort on the Rio Pecos, in the most desolate part of all New Mexico. "Now, I should like to go with you, Hal," had said his brother-in-law, when he read him the order; and he raised his head and flung back his hair, as though he felt the wild, free wind of the Plains tossing it. Paul rode back from the arsenal slowly that evening; and the nearer home he came, the lower drooped his head, the darker grew his brow. At home he paced the floor uneasily, paying little heed to the feeble whimpering of his wife, who had been frittering her life away between camphor-bottles and sentimental novels since Regina had left the house. The drawing-room, where the piano stood, and where the windows opened out on the veranda and the lawn, was his harbor this night, as often when either his own thoughts or the selfish complainings of his wife drove him distractedly about the house. But this night there sounded a single soft strain through his "storming,"--as his wife called it,--and the strain grew wilder and sweeter, till suddenly lost, as the note of some clear-voiced, frightened bird is lost in the howling of the midnight storm. Then had come days of calm, during which the piano remained closed, and he sat meekly under the drivelling talk of his wife, and in the close, dark atmosphere which alone, she insisted, suited the delicate complexion of her face and of her mind. After that, an occasional letter from his brother-in-law, now at his station on the Rio Pecos, or an extra twist of the cord matrimonial, which, since the day of his marriage, seemed literally to encircle his neck, would set the lion to fuming in his cage; and, with the toss of his hair from the forehead, would commence the wandering through the house which always ended with "storming" the piano.