But by twelve o’clock he had worked some of his temper off. The process of cooling down began and ended, too, in sympathy for William. After all, it was hardest on William. He had been a donkey, but he had--in common with the other Carters--a natural horror of notoriety for his women-folks. Divorce and scandal! Mr. Carter, thinking hard, could not recall a single case in his own family. Of course Uncle Duff Carter had quarreled with his wife, but it was about a back lot that adjoined their place. He wanted to sow it to oats for his horses, and his wife wanted to keep it for a private burial-ground for the family. There hadn’t been the least bit of scandal about that quarrel, and it was made up before his uncle died. He was buried, by the way, in that same back lot, with a monument of Florentine marble. His widow had her own way! As for a runaway wife, or any kind of a wife who wasn’t what Mr. Carter called “a lady,” there was no record of it. William, his eldest son and the pride of his heart, seemed about to make the first break in a long line. It must distress William as much as it did his father. Mr. Carter began to feel the greatest compunction about his son. The boy had behaved like a donkey, but there was no use in crying over spilt milk. The only way was to help him set it right. Of course, if the talk got no farther, and William chose to forgive her and could keep her in hand, there was nothing to be done about it. As Mr. Carter’s rage against Fanchon began to cool, he saw the advantage of suppressing the scandal and making her behave. He had no very clear idea of how this should be done, except his firm belief that any sensible man could prevent such doings in his own household. He belonged, too, to a type of manhood that has long ago decided on the simplest method to avenge an insult to his family. He couldn’t recall an ancestor who under such provocation would fail to shoot his man. Times had changed now, but Mr. Carter felt an intense desire to annihilate that brute, Corwin. He had no intention of mentioning this to William. The cooling-off process had reached the stage of common sense; but he felt that he must talk things over with his son. He had experience of life, if he had no experience with a recalcitrant wife, and he wanted to suggest some kind of restraint for his daughter-in-law. It seemed to him a perfectly practical thing--because he had never tried it. A moral strait-jacket for Fanchon appealed to his mind, at the moment, more strongly than any other idea in life. He got through the morning’s work, lunched alone, and then waited until three o’clock. At that time he could endure it no longer. He had caught his two girl stenographers whispering, and he had seen the office-boy watching the inn opposite, where Corwin had stayed the day before. The office-boy brought Mr. Carter’s resolution to a head. He closed his desk sharply, snatched up his hat, and started for William’s office.