"Well, it doesn't come amiss to learn a thing or two in season," returned Mally, with a nod. "All theatrical companies pair off like that.
"The other two young gents who passed by the wing a moment ago, and were watching you so intently, are married. Now, let me repeat the lesson again, so as to impress it upon your mind: Celey Dunbar is Manager Morgan's ex-sweetheart; Mrs. Dovie Davis is married; that gay, jolly girl is Daisy Lee, the soubrette of the company; she'd cut out any one of us if she could; but she's so merry a sprite we don't mind her, especially as none of the fellows take to her particularly."
To Jessie that rehearsal seemed like a bewildering dream. The ladies of the company looked at her coldly, but the gentlemen were wonderfully pleasant to her. They talked to her as freely as though they had known her for years, instead of only an hour. This embarrassed Jessie greatly; she hardly knew how to take this unaccustomed familiarity.
After rehearsal was over, Manager Morgan took her back to her hotel, frowning darkly at Celey Dunbar, who made a bold attempt to walk with them.
"Be ready at seven o'clock sharp," he said, as he left her at the door.
Left to herself when dinner was over, Jessie sat quietly down in her lonely little room to think.
She wondered how such people as she had met that day could play the different parts in the beautiful story whose every incident Manager Morgan had explained to her.
"Certainly it isn't very romantic," she thought, "to have the hero lover of the play a married man."
Night came at last, and feeling more frightened than she had ever felt in her life before, Jessie emerged from her dressing-room. Mally Marsh accompanied her to the wing to see that she went on all right when her cue was given.
"There's a big house out in front," whispered Mally. "Ah! there's your cue now."