Mrs. Rutter, as fate would have it, on hearing that Kate was too ill to go back to town, had gone the next morning to her bedside, where she learned for the first time not only of the duel—­which greatly shocked her, leaving her at first perfectly limp and helpless—­but of Harry’s expulsion from his father’s house—­(Alec owned the private wire)—­a piece of news which at first terrified and then keyed her up as tight as an overstrung violin.  Like many another Southern woman, she might shrink from a cut on a child’s finger and only regain her mental poise by a liberal application of smelling salts, but once touch that boy of hers—­the child she had nourished and lived for—­and all the rage of the she-wolf fighting for her cub was aroused.  What took place behind the closed doors of her bedroom when she faced the colonel and flamed out, no one but themselves knew.  That the colonel was dumfounded—­never having seen her in any such state of mind—­goes without saying.  That he was proud of her and liked her the better for it, is also true—­nothing delighted him so much as courage;—­but nothing of all this, impressive as it was, either weakened or altered his resolve.

Nor did he change front to his friends and acquaintances:  his honorable name, he maintained, had been trailed in the mud; his boasted hospitality betrayed; his house turned into a common shamble.  That his own son was the culprit made the pain and mortification the greater, but it did not lessen his responsibility to his blood.  Had not Foscari, to save his honor, in the days of the great republic, condemned his own son Jacopo to exile and death?  Had not Virginius slain his daughter?  Should he not protect his own honor as well?  Furthermore, was not the young man’s father a gentleman of standing—­a prominent man in the State—­a friend not only of his own friend, Henry Clay, but of the governor as well?  He, of course, would not have Harry marry into the family had there been a marriageable daughter, but that was no reason why Mr. Willits’s only son should not be treated with every consideration.  He, Talbot Rutter, was alone responsible for the honor of his house.  When your right hand offends you cut it off.  His right hand had offended him, and he had cut it off.  Away, then, with the spinning of fine phrases!

And so he let the hornets buzz—­and they did swarm and buzz and sting.  As long as his wrath lasted he was proof against their assaults—­in fact their attacks only confirmed him in his position.  It was when all this ceased, for few continued to remonstrate with him after they had heard his final:  “I decline to discuss it with you, madame,” or the more significant:  “How dare you, sir, refer to my private affairs without my permission?”—­it was, I say, when all this ceased, and when neither his wife, who after her first savage outbreak had purposely held her peace, nor any of the servants—­not even old Alec, who went about with streaming eyes and a great lump in his throat—­dared renew their entreaties for Marse Harry’s return, that he began to reflect on his course.