During this tour, though Mrs. Carter revealed fine talent and won some commendation, the business was uniformly bad until she appeared in Chicago; there, for the first time, the receipts exceeded the expenses, and it began to seem as though the tide had turned toward prosperity. But the venture had already cost more than $40,000, and Fairbank, becoming dissatisfied, suddenly withdrew his support. “On the strength of Mr. Fairbank’s promise,” Belasco declared, “I had given mine, to many creditors, and now, when they pressed for payment (as they did very quickly when it became known Fairbank had withdrawn), I was unable to keep it. I had no recourse but to bring suit against him to make good his promise and, most unwillingly, I prepared to do so.” Mrs. Carter’s first tour under Belasco’s direction and the life of “The Ugly Duckling” were both peremptorily brought to an end by Fairbank, acting through one of his attorneys, R. W. Morrison, in Kansas City, on March 14, 1891; the theatrical company which had been acting in association with Mrs. Carter was disbanded, and the perplexed manager and his dejected pupil returned to New York, where arrangements were presently made by Belasco to institute a lawsuit against Fairbank. Writing on this subject he has said: “The Fairbank lawyers came to New York to see what compromise I would accept. I said: ’Here are all the bills. If you pay them, the incident will be closed.’ But they refused. Mr. Fairbank had hoped the tour would be a financial success, the lawyers said, and he would never have entered into such a speculation if he had known how much it involved. ’Certainly,’ I answered, ’he did not expect a theatrical venture of this nature to cost nothing! I am sure of Mrs. Carter’s ultimate success,’ I declared, ’and I am willing to bind myself by a promise to pay everything back’; but the lawyers refused. So I put my affairs in the hands of my friend, Judge Dittenhoefer, and the suit began. The trial lasted for three weeks.”