"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 _pere_ and _mere_ 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.
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