“Mr. Tisdale will he a leading witness for the Government in the pending Alaska coal cases.  Strange—­is it not?—­since a criminal is barred from testifying in a United States court.

“The last issue of your magazine was most attractive.  Enclosed are lists of two thousand names and my check to cover that many sample copies of the number in which the story is published.  March would be opportune.  Of course, while I do not object to any use you may care to make of this information, I trust I shall be spared publicity.

“Very truly,

“MARCIA FEVERSHAM.”

CHAPTER XXI

FOSTER’S HOUR

Frederic Morganstein did not wait until spring to open his villa.  The furnishings were completed, even to the Kodiak and polar-bear rugs, in time to entertain a house-party at Christmas.  Marcia, who came home for the event, arrived early enough to take charge of the final preparations, but the ideas that gave character to the lavish decorations were Beatriz Weatherbee’s.  She it was who suggested the chime of holly bells with tongues of red berries, hung by ropes of cedar from the vaulted roof directly over the stage; and saw the two great scarlet camellias that had been coaxed into full bloom specially for the capitalist placed at either end of the footlights, while potted poinsettias and small madrona trees, brought in from the bluffs above the grounds, finished the scheme with the effect of an old mission garden.  Then there were a hundred more poinsettias disposed of, without crowding, on the landings and inside the railing of the gallery, with five hundred red carnations arranged with Oregon grape and fern in Indian baskets to cap the balustrade.  To one looking up from the lower hall, they had the appearance of quaint jardiniere.

There was not too much color.  December, in the Puget Sound country, means the climax of the wet season when under the interminable curtain of the rain, dawn seems to touch hands with twilight.  It was hardly four o’clock that Christmas eve when the Aquila arrived with the guests from Seattle, but the villa lights were on.  A huge and resinous backlog, sending broad tongues of flame into the cavernous throat of the fireplace, gave to the illumination a ruddier, flickering glow.  To Foster, who was the first to reach the veranda, Foster who had been so long accustomed to faring at Alaska road-houses, to making his own camp, on occasion, with a single helper in the frosty solitudes, that view through the French window must have seemed like a scene from the Arabian Nights.  Involuntarily he stopped, and suddenly the luxurious interior became a setting for one living figure.  Elizabeth was there, arranging trifles on a Christmas tree; and Mrs. Feversham, seated at a piano, was playing a brilliant bolero; but the one woman he saw held the center of the stage.  Her sparkling face was framed in a mantilla; a camellia, plucked from one of the flowering shrubs, was tucked in the lace above her ear, and she was dancing with castanets in the old mission garden.