For fifteen years Mrs. Carrie Payson's bitterness at the outcome of her own unfortunate marriage had been unconsciously expressed in her attitude toward the possible marriage of her daughter Lottie. Confronted with this accusation, she would have denied it and her daughter Lottie would have defended her in the denial. Nevertheless, it was true. During the years when all Mrs. Payson's energy, thought, and time were devoted to the success of the real estate and bond business, her influence had been less markedly felt than later. In some indefinable way the few men who came within Lottie's ken were startled and repelled by the grim white-haired woman who regarded them with eyes of cold hostility. One or two of them had said, uncomfortably, in one of Mrs. Payson's brief absences, "Your mother doesn't like me." "What nonsense! Why shouldn't she?" "I don't know. She looks at me as if she had something on me." Then as Lottie stiffened perceptibly, "Oh, I didn't mean that exactly. No offence, I hope. I just meant----" "Mother's like I am. She isn't demonstrative but her likes and dislikes are very definite." Lottie, remember, was only twenty-three or thereabouts at this time. Still, she should have known better. "You don't say!" the young man would exclaim, thoughtfully. Now, suddenly, Mrs. Payson had about-faced. Perhaps this in turn was as unconscious as her previous attitude had been. Perhaps the thought of a spinster daughter of thirty-three pricked her vanity. Perhaps she, like Lottie, had got a sudden glimpse into the future in which she saw Lottie a second Aunt Charlotte, tremulous and withered, telling out her days in her sister Belle's household. It was slowly borne in on Lottie that her mother regarded Ben Gartz favourably as a possible son-in-law. Her first sensation on making this discovery was one of amusement. Her mother in the rôle of match-maker wore a humourous aspect, certainly. As the weeks went on this amusement gave way to something resembling terror. Mrs. Payson usually achieved her own ends. Lottie had never defined the relationship that existed between her mother and herself. She did not suspect that they were united by a strong bond of affection and hate so complexly interwoven that it was almost impossible to tell which strand was this and which that. Mrs. Payson did not dream that she had blocked her daughter's chances for a career or for marital happiness. Neither did she know that she looked down upon that daughter for having failed to marry. But both were true in some nightmarish and indefinable way. Mrs. Carrie Payson, the coarser metal, had beat upon Lottie, the finer, and had moulded and shaped her as iron beats upon gold. Lottie was still in the amused stage when Mrs. Payson remarked: