For nearly two minutes they stood waiting for a break in her tempestuous flow of words, but as none came, the senior impatiently stepped forward and the adjutant-general, looking up, sprang from his chair just as the chief himself came hurrying out from the _sanctum sanctorum_ and greeted the newcomers with cordially clasping hands. The lady too had risen. This was another of those stuck-up star-wearers who at San Francisco as much as told her she was a nuisance, and who wouldn't send her by transport to Manila. Yet here she was in spite of them all, and the most important woman on the island! Zenobia's face was flushed with triumph that the star-wearer should be made to feel and see before she would consent to leave the room. "Well, I shall have to interrupt you gentlemen," said she, "for _my_ business won't keep if you propose to keep _me_. I want to know right here and now, General Drayton, whether I'm to get my pay or not; if not, I don't propose to wait another day in Manila, and you can get out of the scrape the best way you know how. No one here but me could swear that young man Foster was dead, and you know it." "You've sworn to what isn't so, madame," interposed the new arrival placidly. "Here's that young man Foster!" and as he spoke the lattice doors again swung open, and, very pale, a tall youth in civilian dress was ushered in, at sight of whom Major Farquhar fairly shouted. -------------------- "How'd I get him?" said the new-comer five minutes later. "Found him aboard the Coptic when she met us as we were pulling out from Honolulu. He was going back to the States. Left Hong Kong before the story was published. Didn't want to come, of course, but had to." "Wasn't there time to write his mother? They surely would have cabled, and the Coptic must have got into San Francisco a week ago." "Certainly! Letter was sent right on by the steamer, addressed to Cincinnati." "O Lord!" said Drayton. "And she was at 'Frisco all the time. Colonel," he added to his chief-of-staff, "what's the first transport home?" "Zealandia, sir; to-morrow." "Sorry for the Zealandia, but Zenobia must go with her." CHAPTER XX.