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.

"I have left mother!" she announced. "And I have her car
downstairs, and a clergyman in it, unless he has run away. He
doesn't want to marry us, because he's afraid mother will stop
supporting his flower mission. You get your hat and take me where
he can marry us. No mother can talk about the man I love the way
mother talked about you, and think I won't marry him the same day!"

Carter, with her mother's handwriting still red before his eyes,
and his self-love shaken with rage flourished the letter.

"And no mother," he shouted, "can call ME a 'fortune-hunter' and a
'cradle-robber' and think I'll make good by marrying her daughter!
Not until she BEGS me to!"

Dolly swept toward him like a summer storm. Her eyes were wet and
flashing. "Until WHO begs you to?" she demanded. "WHO are you
marrying; mother or me?"

"If I marry you," cried Carter, frightened but also greatly