gs along for Charlie and Linda. They
are genuinely in love with each other. I can see you turning up your
little nose at that. I know you've held a rather biased opinion of
your brother and his works since that unfortunate winter. But it
doesn't do to be too self-righteous. Charlie, then, was very little
different from any rather headlong, self-centered, red-blooded
youngster. I'm afraid I'm expressing myself badly. What I mean is
that while he was drifting then into a piggy muddle, he had the
sense to take a brace before his lapses became vices. Partly
because--I've flattered myself--I talked to him like a Dutch uncle,
and partly because he's cast too much in the same clean-cut mold
that you are, to let his natural passions run clean away with him.
He'll always be more or less a profound egotist. But he'll be a good
deal more of a man than you, perhaps, think.

"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. When it does come, it will be a
sort