“Thank you, sir, I appreciate your faith in me,” Bryson acknowledged gratefully. “When do you intend starting?” “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. Particularly when one’s talents run only to running a sporty little racer and a thorough knowledge of all the most recent dance steps and a canny way of learning just where to find the best bootleggers—a talent which the young man put into the limbo of forgotten things as his first step in his new life. Both he and his mother felt he could put his knowledge of automobiles to practical account. But when he applied for one position after another with automobile firms, he was laughed at for his pains. Not even he had realized exactly how little he did know about machines. Too long had he left the disagreeable part to mechanics. His belief in friends (at first) had led him into the offices of those he had known in palmier days. But it was with stung pride that he abandoned this after a few efforts. They had all seemed kind enough—patronizing even—but always it was the same thing he had heard in Thurston’s bond office: “Nothing now, my boy—but if you don’t get settled, you might call again some time.”