“Never mind the obligations,” the master broke in, with a return to the brittle abruptness. “There is an old saying that the quickest way to make an enemy of a man is to do him a favor. If it isn’t working out that way in your case, why, so much the better. Now you may go back to the dinner people, if you want to. I’ve got to dictate a bunch of letters.” And the king of the contractors jabbed his square-ended thumb on a push-button to summon his secretary. VIII Out of the Past Dismissed from the presence of the hard-bitted maker of destinies, David Vallory--not being a devotee of bridge--spent little enough of what was left of the evening in the manner in which he most wished to spend it. But at the end of things, when hope deferred was about to fold its wings and go to bed, Miss Virginia gave her place at the second whist table to the elderly broker’s juvenile wife, and David had the reward which comes to those who only stand and wait. “Well, have you been dishonorably discharged?” she asked, after they had passed out of earshot of the card players. “I imagine you know a lot more than I can tell you about it,” he bubbled happily. “I’m to take an early train to-morrow morning and vanish, disappear, fade into the western horizon.” “Are you sorry--or glad?” “Both. I’ve had a promotion so whaling big that it makes my head swim. But the place of it is a mighty long jump from Chicago.” “You didn’t make any use of the nearness of Chicago while you had it at Coulee du Sac,” she cavilled. Then: “Are you starting west without going to see your father and sister?” “I was with them Christmas, as I told you. And I have a plan which has been simmering while I was waiting for you to get tired of the whist-game. If the living accommodations in the Timanyoni country are at all possible, I shall send for Dad and Lucille a little later in the season.” “The accommodations are very good. There is a small summer-resort hotel with cottages on the ridge opposite Powder Can.” “You have been there?” David asked. “Once; for a few weeks last summer, or rather early in the autumn, when the work was just starting. But won’t that be a rather violent change for your father and sister?--from sleepy old Middleboro to the heart of the Rockies?” “Possibly. But there are reasons for believing that it will be beneficial all around. Dad isn’t entirely well. His heart was never in the banking business to any great extent, but just the same, the breaking up of all the old routine is hard for him. A complete change will do him no end of good.” “You said ‘reasons’, and that is only one.” “There is another. How much do you remember about my sister, Lucille?” “Only that she is blind, and perfectly angelic, and the most delicately beautiful child that ever breathed.” “She is all those things yet--only more so. Do you remember Bert Oswald?” “Oh, yes; quite well. He is a lawyer now, isn’t he?”