Nevertheless, Jenny was looking remarkably well.  Perhaps it was the excitement of travel and new surroundings; but her tall, lithe figure, nearly half a head taller than her husband’s, was a striking one among the officers’ wives in the commandant’s sitting-room.  Her olive cheek glowed with a faint illuminating color; there was something even patrician in her slightly curved nose and high cheek bones, and her smile, rare even in her most excited moments, was, like her brother’s, singularly fascinating.  The officers evidently thought so too, and when the young lieutenant of the commissary escort, fresh from West Point and Flirtation Walk, gallantly attached himself to her, the ladies were slightly scandalized at the naive air of camaraderie with which Mrs. Lascelles received his attentions.  Even Peter was a little disturbed.  Only Lascelles, delighted with his wife’s animation, and pleased at her success, gazed at her with unqualified admiration.  Indeed, he was so satisfied with her improvement, and so sanguine of her ultimate recovery, that he felt justified in leaving her with her brother and returning to Omaha by the regular mail wagon next day.  There was no danger to be apprehended in her accompanying Peter; they would have a full escort; the reservation lay in a direction unfrequented by marauding tribes; the road was the principal one used by the government to connect the fort with the settlements, and well traveled; the officers’ wives had often journeyed thither.

The childish curiosity and high spirits which Jenny showed on the journey to the reservation was increased when she reached it and drew up before the house of the Indian agent.  Peter was relieved; he had been anxious and nervous as to any instinctive effect which might be produced on her excitable nature by a first view of her own kinsfolk, although she was still ignorant of her relationship.  Her interest and curiosity, however, had nothing abnormal in it.  But he was not prepared for the effect produced upon them at her first appearance.  A few of the braves gathered eagerly around her, and one even addressed her in his own guttural tongue, at which she betrayed a slight feeling of alarm; and Peter saw with satisfaction that she drew close to him.  Knowing that his old interpreter and Gray Eagle were of a different and hostile tribe a hundred miles away, and that his secret was safe with them, he simply introduced her as his sister.  But he presently found that the braves had added to their curiosity a certain suspiciousness and sullen demeanor, and he was glad to resign his sister into the hands of the agent’s wife, while he prosecuted his business of examination and inspection.  Later, on his return to the cabin, he was met by the agent, who seemed to be with difficulty suppressing a laugh.