“I can’t understand it! Surely you knew I wasn’t going to remain here forever! You should have remained in your comfortable room at the hotel. You could have easily taken a taxi back and forth from here.” “Well I—I—” The tears she had held back in his presence for those long months suddenly gushed forth. She had reached the end of her strength. Sobs shook her. “Dearest, _what_ is it? Sit here and tell me all about it.” Howard placed her tenderly in the rocker, and drew a chair for himself close beside her. “No—no—it’s nothing at all.” She tried hard to check her tears as she protested, but unavailingly. “I’ll tell you as soon as you’re well and strong, but now——” “I’m well and strong now! Why Doctor Simpson says I’m in a better physical condition than I’ve ever been since I was a boy. I insist upon your telling me just exactly what it is that is troubling you, mother,” he said firmly. “Very well, dear.” She realized it was useless to refuse. So she told him everything,—just what amount of money Hugh had given her and exactly how much of it had been spent. “Oh, mother, dear, if you had only mentioned it to me at the time,” he reproached her gently. “You can’t imagine how hurt I was because you failed to tell me. I thought it was because you didn’t trust me enough.” “No, no, it wasn’t that,” she hastened to assure him. “I didn’t wish you to feel more embittered toward your father.” “I’d have gone to him at the time and told him plainly just what I thought of him!” he exclaimed indignantly. “He cheated you, mother—that’s what he did—and all because of that miserable creature!” “Hush, dear, you’re only exciting yourself needlessly,” she cautioned him, “and it won’t do a bit of good. The thing is this—just what are we going to do?” “_We_ are not going to do anything, dearest.” He put his arms tenderly about her. “_I’m_ going to do it all. I’m going to work, and take care of you the rest of your life!” CHAPTER XIX Hugh Benton had lost no time (nor had the widow allowed him, for that matter) after obtaining his divorce decree, in marrying Geraldine DeLacy. Some of their intimates, many of the more conservative element or the society in which they moved, believed that the marriage had occurred indecently soon after Marjorie had been put aside. But in general society let them alone to go their own way. Shoulders were raised eloquently in a few quarters, in others the names of Hugh Benton and the former Mrs. DeLacy were quietly erased from invitation lists, but the scandal was (as is so often the case among the busy four or five thousand who were once four hundred) not long in giving place to something more recent. Society was beginning to yawn when the name of Benton was mentioned.