Paula had thus the half-hearted support of her relatives in her proceedings, and she was grateful even for this, saying to herself that with their limitations she could hardly have expected more. She was eager and hopeful, and, to Mrs. Majoribanks’s displeasure, not more sensitive to the mention of the proceedings than if they had involved a transaction concerning cotton or corn. The three Majoribanks boys were excited on the possibility of an attempt to kidnap little Edward, since the filing of the bill, and they kept him, in alternation, under close and strict surveillance night and day.
“It would be impossible to spirit him away from Ingleside,” they bluffly contended, and to their mother’s great though unexpressed displeasure their father did not rebuke their bluster.
“We all talk of getting the decree,” she said in connubial privacy, “as if it were a diploma.”
He nodded ruefully. But he was the more progressive of the two.
And in this feeble and sorry wise the influence of modern civilization began to impinge on the primitive convictions and traditions of Ingleside.
Adrian Ducie was affronted beyond measure by the unseemly notoriety given to his part in the Floyd-Rosney incident, in the subsequent publications emanating from various sources. The serious menace, however, that the circumstances held for Randal moderated for a time his indignation. He thought it not improbable that Floyd-Rosney would shoot Randal Ducie on sight, and he greatly deprecated the fact that his brother was chronicled by the New Orleans papers as having quitted that city, on his way to Memphis, returning by boat.
“Why didn’t the fellow stay where he was until matters should have developed more acceptably?” Adrian fumed in mingled disgust and apprehension. His anxiety was somewhat assuaged in the meantime when Colonel Kenwynton’s letter appeared, and more especially when Floyd-Rosney withdrew his petition for divorce--a definite confession of his clumsy mistake. Still in Adrian’s opinion latent fires slumbered under the volcanic crust, as this sudden eruption had proved. This city was no place for the bone of contention between husband and wife. The season for the preparations for cotton planting was already well advanced. Assuredly it was seemly and desirable for Randal to repair to his plantation and supervise the operations of his manager and his laborers. Adrian found his own stay in the city harassing to his exacerbated nerves. The questioning stare of men whom he passed on the streets, who looked as if they expected salutation, in default of which surmised that this was the twin brother, hero of the Floyd-Rosney _esclandre_, annoyed him by its constant repetition, and gave his face a repellant reserve which the countenance of the gentle and genial Randal had never known. A dozen times he was more intimately assailed, “Hey, Ran, old man, how goes it?” with perhaps a quizzical leer, or an eager hopefulness that some discussion of the reigning sensation of the day might not be too intrusive. When the stranger was enlightened, not abruptly, however, for Adrian was cautious to refrain from alienating Randal’s friends, the comments on the wonderful likeness implied an accession of interest in the significant incident in Union Station, and, doubtless, many a surmise as to what had betided heretofore to arouse the lion in the husband’s breast. Obviously, both the brothers for every reason should be removed from the public eye till the story was stale; but, although Adrian felt this keenly, he himself could not get away in view of the interests of his firm in an important silk deal with a large concern desiring to treat directly with the representative of the manufacturers.