“I understand,” he said slowly, and his color rose.  “You may marry again.”  Then he asked, without protest:  “Is it Foster?”

On occasion, during that long drive through the mountains, he had felt the varying height and thickness of an invisible barrier, but never, until that moment, its chill.  Then Marcia Feversham called her, and she turned to go down the deck.  “I’m coming!” she answered and stopped to look back.  “You need not trouble about Mr. Foster,” she said.  “He—­is safe.”

CHAPTER XVII

“ALL THESE THINGS WILL I GIVE THEE”

Frederic had suggested a rubber at auction bridge.

Elizabeth fixed another pillow under his shoulders and moved the card table to his satisfaction, then took a chair near the players and unfolded her crochet, while Tisdale, whose injured hand excluded him from the game, seated himself beside her.  He asked whimsically if she was manufacturing a cloud like the one in the west where the sun had set; but she lacked her sister’s ready repartee, and, arresting her needle long enough to glance at him and back to the woolly, peach-pink pile in her lap, answered seriously:  “It’s going to be a hug-me-tight.”

The lieutenant laughed.  “Sounds interesting, does it not?” he said, shuffling the cards.  “But calm yourself, sir; a hug-me-tight is merely a kind of sweater built on the lines of a vest.”

He dealt, and Mrs. Feversham bid a lily.  From his position Tisdale was able to watch Mrs. Weatherbee’s face and her cards.  She held herself erect in a subdued excitement as the game progressed; the pink flush deepened and went and came in her cheek; the blue lights danced in her eyes.  Repeatedly she flashed intelligence to her partner across the board.  And the lieutenant began to wait in critical moments for the glance.  They won the first hand.  Then it became apparent that he and Morganstein were betting on the side, and Marcia remonstrated.  “It isn’t that we are scrupulous alone,” she said, “but we lose inspiration playing second fiddle.”

“Come in then,” suggested Frederic and explained to the lieutenant:  “She can put up a hundred dollars and lose ’em like a soldier.”

“The money stayed in the family,” she said quickly.  “Beatriz, it is your bid.”

Mrs. Weatherbee was calculating the possibilities of her hand.  Her suit was diamonds; seven in sequence from the jack.  She held also the three highest in clubs and the other black king.  She was weak in hearts.  “I bid two diamonds,” she said slowly, “and, Marcia, it’s my ruby against your check for three hundred dollars.”

There was a flutter of surprise.  “No,” remonstrated Elizabeth sharply.  “No, Marcia can buy the ring for what it is worth.”

“Then I should lose the chance to keep it.  Three hundred will be enough to lose.”  And she added, less confidently:  “But if you should win, Marcia, it is understood you will not let the ring go out of your hands.”