“The day after to-morrow.”
“Why, Mr. Benton! That’s impossible! You have that gigantic deal on hand with Randall, Small & Company! It might be disastrous for you to leave before it is completed.”
Hugh shook his head stubbornly. “Come back in an hour, and we’ll talk this thing over again,” he ordered.
But on the man’s return at the end of the hour, he found Hugh Benton’s private office empty. A note on the desk informed him that Mr. Benton had gone. He was leaving for Chicago at once, and from there to San Francisco. He left everything in Bryson’s hands, and he would write him particulars as soon as he arrived.
“Strangest thing I ever heard of,” Bryson muttered, reading the note again. “Chances are, he’ll think better of it and hurry right back.”
In her boudoir in “The Castle,” Geraldine DeLacy Benton stopped in her preparations for a gay party to scan the telegram her maid handed her.
“Hmmph!” was her comment, as she dipped deeply into her gold powder box. “California, eh? Rather sudden—wonder how long he’ll stay? Well,” and she held out her slender foot for the velvet slipper the long-suffering maid held, “he needn’t hurry back on my account!”
The only one who knew he never intended to come back at all was—Hugh Benton!
CHAPTER XX
It is one thing to announce a heroic determination to become the family bread winner. It is quite another to put that determination to practical account, as Howard Benton was to learn in the days that followed his sojourn at the sanitarium and since learning that his mother’s resources were almost gone.