Harriet went back to Kentucky with the question of Alexander and Molly still open. A year later her father went South again. War was loudly threatening, and he had large interests in Louisiana and Mississippi. There was a certain sympathy and understanding between the stern, silent man and his daughter, and he suggested that she go with him and see the child newly born to Alexander and Molly. But, reaching New Orleans to find his son gone to Mobile, concerning these same interests, Mr. Blair decided to join him, and Molly being about to leave for her father's plantation with the baby and nurse, that she might the more rapidly convalesce, it was decided that Harriet accompany her. The two weeks at Cannes Brulée were strange to the girl, thus introduced to a Southern house overflowing with guests and servants, and she moved amid the idling and irresponsibility, the laughter and persiflage, with a sense of being outside of it all, and the fault, try as she would, her own. This feeling was strongest that Sunday afternoon when the gaiety and badinage seemed to centre about a new arrival, a handsome, silver-aureoled Catholic priest, confessor to half the parish. Genial, polished, and affable, his very charm seemed to the Calvinistic-bred Harriet to invest him the more with the seductions of Romanism, as she had been taught to regard them. There were music, cards, a huge bowl frosted with the icy beverage within, and to the stunned young Puritan the genial little priest in the midst seemed smiling a bacchanalian benediction over all. Suddenly, above chatter and music Molly's voice arose, gay but insistent, Molly there in the big chair, pale and big-eyed, her strength so slow to return, herself a child in her little muslin dress. "Baby is four weeks old," Molly was declaring, "and here is Father Bonot from service at Cannes Brulée and so with his vestments. I'm here and Harriet's here, and mamma's here, and everybody else is a cousin or something. I'm sure I don't know when I can get to church. P'tite shall be baptized here, now." And before the slower comprehension of the dazed Harriet had grasped the meaning of the ensuing preparations--the draping of the pier-table, the lighting of waxen candles--a sudden silence had fallen; the gay abandon of these mercurial Southerners had given place to reverent awe, even to tears, as the new-born representative of the Puritan Blairs was brought in, in robes like cascades of lace, while of all that followed, the one thing seeming to reach the comprehension of Harriet was the chanting monotone of Father Bonot saying above the child, "Mary Alexina--" Later Molly and Harriet went back to New Orleans, to find Alexander there but his father gone up to Vicksburg. Molly was to keep Harriet with her until his return.