The ridiculous mother was not present at the races, but after Carter began to call at their house and was invited to dinner, Mrs. Ingram received him with her habitual rudeness. As an impediment in the success of her ambition she never considered him. As a boy friend of her daughter’s, she classed him with “her” lawyer and “her” architect and a little higher than the “person” who arranged the flowers. Nor, in her turn, did Dolly consider her mother; for within two months another matter of controversy between Dolly and Carter was as to who had first proposed to the other. Carter protested there never had been any formal proposal, that from the first they had both taken it for granted that married they would be. But Dolly insisted that because he had been afraid of her money, or her mother, he had forced her to propose to him. “You could not have loved me very much,” she complained, “if you’d let a little thing like money make you hesitate.” “It’s not a little thing,” suggested Carter. “They say it’s several millions, and it happens to be YOURS. If it were MINE, now!” “Money,” said Dolly sententiously, “is given people to make them happy, not to make them miserable.” “Wait until I sell my stories to the magazines,” said Carter, “and then I will be independent and can support you.” The plan did not strike Dolly as one likely to lead to a hasty marriage. But he was sensitive about his stories, and she did not wish to hurt his feelings. “Let’s get married first,” she suggested, “and then I can BUY you a magazine. We’ll call it CARTER’S MAGAZINE and we will print nothing in it but your stories. Then we can laugh at the editors!” “Not half as loud as they will,” said Carter. With three thousand dollars in bank and three stories accepted and seventeen still to hear from, and with Dolly daily telling him that it was evident he did not love her, Carter decided they were ready, hand in hand, to leap into the sea of matrimony. His interview on the subject with Mrs. Ingram was most painful. It lasted during the time it took her to walk out of her drawing-room to the foot of her staircase. She spoke to herself, and the only words of which Carter was sure were “preposterous” and “intolerable insolence.” Later in the morning she sent a note to his flat, forbidding him not only her daughter, but the house in which her daughter lived, and even the use of the United States mails and the New York telephone wires. She described his conduct in words that, had they come from a man, would have afforded Carter every excuse for violent exercise. Immediately in the wake of the note arrived Dolly, in tears, and carrying a dressing-case.