"I never used to think much of these matters. I suppose my own failure at a thing in which I was cocksure of success had made me a bit dubious about anybody I care for starting so serious an undertaking as marriage under any sort of handicap. I do like Charlie Benton and Linda Abbey. They are marrying in the face of her people's earnest attempt to break it up. The Abbeys are hopelessly conservative. Anything in the nature of our troubles aired in public would make it pretty tough sledding for Linda. As it stands, they are consenting very ungracefully, but as a matter of family pride, intend to give Linda a big wedding. "Now, no one outside of you and me and--well you and me--knows that there is a rift in our lute. I haven't been quizzed--naturally. It got about that you'd taken up voice culture with an eye to opera as a counteracting influence to the grief of losing your baby. I fostered that rumor--simply to keep gossip down until things shaped themselves positively. Once these two are married, they have started--Abbey _père_ and _mère_ will then be unable to frown on Linda's contemplated alliance with a family that's produced a divorce case. "I do not suppose you will take any legal steps until after those concerts. Until then, please keep up the fiction that the house of Fyfe still stands on a solid foundation--a myth that you've taken no measures to dispel since you left. When it does come, it will be a sort of explosion, and I'd rather have it that way--one amazed yelp from our friends and the newspapers, and it's over. "Meantime, you will receive an invitation to the wedding. I hope you'll accept. You needn't have any compunctions about playing the game. You will not encounter me, as I have my hands full here, and I'm notorious in Vancouver for backing out of functions, anyway. It is not imperative that you should do this. It's merely a safeguard against a bomb from the Abbey fortress.