CHAPTER XVIII In the breaking up of the Benton home, there were no distressing leave-takings. The father was the first to go. Indeed, it cannot be said that he ever made The Castle his home again after the night he spent there preceding the inquest into the death of Templeton Druid and his son’s consequent indictment on the charge of manslaughter. How much of this was due to Geraldine DeLacy’s influence it would be hard to say. The man himself would have denied that she in any way held sway over his movements, but the subtle suggestions she was able to throw out, always with words of love and with the persuasiveness of her own logic that Hugh must do things for his own sake, were balm to the man whose selfishness had grown so great that he was unable to see that there was anything paramount to his own desires. So on the day following the tragic dénouement in the inquest room, Hugh Benton installed himself in a suite of rooms in one of the city’s most fashionable hotels. Elinor was enthusiastic when she learned where he had gone. It had always been her desire to live in just such a fashion, and she gleefully welcomed the opportunity of freedom it would give her. She knew that her father’s chaperonage would at no time be irksome. “How wonderful, Daddy!” she exclaimed as she flew from one wide window of his sitting room to another to look out over the towering roofs of the humming city. “When may I come? And where are you going to put me?” When her father took her into the adjoining suite he had reserved for her and led her into the blue silk-lined boudoir which was its crowning glory, her happiness knew no bounds. She forgot the tragedy that hung over her brother and mother, forgot everything save that she was to be a woman of the world, and live her life to please herself in such surroundings. Her father looked on with pleased eyes as he saw her rapture. “It’s ready for you, baby, whenever you like, but do you think you should leave—just yet?” He was a little dubious about the proprieties. The lessons of years are not unlearned in hours. Elinor pouted. “What’s the use of staying with those others any longer?” she asked. “Why, Daddy, you have no idea how disagreeable it all is—how they look at me (if they do at all), as though I were the criminal, instead of——” Hugh Benton turned on his heel. It grated to hear his son referred to as a criminal, even from his own daughter.