protection by the urgency of his advice, although his wife goaded him with her strict interpretations of his duty, and his brow clouded whenever she mentioned her belief of the influence of the expectation of winning back Randal Ducie upon Paula’s determination. 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. CHAPTER XXIII 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.