Opinion.  But no one in Seattle would breathe a suggestion of blame.  And it isn’t as though you had worn first mourning.  The wedding could be very quiet, with a long honeymoon to Japan or Mexico; both, if you wished.  And you might come home to open this house with a reception late in May.  The twilights are delightful then.  Come, think, Bee!  You’ve been irreproachable; the most exacting would admit that.  And every one knows David Weatherbee practically deserted you for years.”

Tisdale saw her mouth tremble.  The quiver ran over her face, her whole body.  For an instant her lashes fell, then she lifted them and met Marcia Feversham’s calculating look.  “It was not desertion,” she said.  “He contributed—­his best—­to my support.  I took all he had to give.  If ever you are where people are—­talking—­do me the favor to correct that mistake.  And, now, if you please, Marcia, we will not bring David Weatherbee in any more.”

Mrs. Feversham laughed a little.  “I am willing, bygones are bygones, only listen to Frederic.”

“You are mistaken, too, about Mr. Morganstein’s motive, Marcia.  He built this house for all his friends and Elizabeth’s.  He owes her something; she has always been so devoted to him.”  And she added, as she turned to go back to the gallery, “He knows I do not care to marry again.”

Tisdale had not foreseen the personal drift to the conversation.  And it had not occurred to him he was unobserved; the balcony light was directly over him, and he had waited, expecting they would come through to the porch, to speak to them.  Now he saw that from where they had stopped in the brilliant interior, his figure must have blended into the background of hemlock boughs.  If they had given him any thought, they had believed he had gone down with Elizabeth and the lieutenant.  To have apologized, made himself known, after he grasped the significance of the situation, would only have resulted in embarrassment to them all.  He allowed them time to reach the floor below.  But the heat rose in his face.  And suddenly, as his mind ran back over that interview in the bows of the Aquila, his question in regard to Foster seemed gross.  Still, still, she had said she did “not care to marry again.”  That one fact radiated subconsciously through the puzzling thoughts that baffled him.

Behind him a few splendid chords rolled through the hall to the vaulted roof, then pealed forth the overture from Martha.  That had been Weatherbee’s favorite opera.  Sometimes on long Arctic nights, when they were recalling old times and old songs, he himself had taken Plunkett’s part to David’s Lionel.  He could see that cabin now, the door set wide, while their voices stormed the white silence under the near Yukon stars.  His eyes gathered their absent expression.  It was as though he looked beyond the park, far and away into other vast solitudes; saw once more the cliffs of Nanatuk looming through fog and heard clearly, booming across the ice, the great, familiar baritone.