A small hand was thrust forward without the least sign of haste, although it trembled a little from shyness.
“I’m not Polly, Mr. Hunt,” the girl said smiling. “I am Mollie, her twin sister. But you must not mistake us, because even if we do look alike, we are not in the least alike in other ways. For one thing, I wouldn’t be in Polly O’Neill’s shoes tonight, not for this whole world with a fence around it. How can she do such a horrible thing as to be an actress? Polly considers that I haven’t a spark of ambition, but why on earth should a sensible girl want a career?”
Suddenly Mollie blushed until her cheeks were pinker than before. “Oh, I am so sorry! I forgot for the moment that you were an actor, Mr. Hunt. Of course things are very different with you. A man must have a career! But I ought to apologize for talking to you without our having met each other. You see, Polly has spoken of you so many times, saying how kind you had been in trying to help her, that I thought for the instant I actually did know you. Forgive me, and now I must find Polly.”
Mollie was always shy, but realizing all at once how much she had confided to a stranger, she felt overwhelmed with embarrassment. How the other girls would laugh if they ever learned of what she had said. Yet Mr. Hunt was not laughing at her, nor did he appear in the least offended. Mollie was sure he must be as kind as Polly had declared him, although he did look older than she had expected and must be quite thirty, as his hair was beginning to turn gray at the temples and there were heavy lines about the corners of his mouth. As Mollie now turned the handle of her sister’s dressing-room door she was hoping that her new acquaintance had not noticed how closely she had studied him.
However, she need not have worried, for her companion was only thinking of how pretty she was and yet how oddly like her twin sister. For Mollie seemed to possess the very graces that Polly lacked. Evidently she was more amiable, better poised and more reliable, her figure was more attractive, her color prettier and her manner gracious and appealing.
“I am afraid you won’t find your sister in there, Miss O’Neill. I have knocked several times without an answer,” Richard Hunt finally interposed.
“Won’t find her?” Mollie repeated the words in consternation. “Then where on earth is she? Miss Adams sent me to tell Polly that she wished to speak to her for half a moment before the curtain went up. Besides, Miss Ashton has already searched everywhere for her for quite ten minutes and then came back to her seat in the theater, having had to give up.”
Forcibly Mollie now turned the handle of the door and peered in. The small room was unoccupied, as the other two members of the company who shared it with Polly, having dressed some time before, had also disappeared.
But Richard Hunt could wait no longer to assist in discovering the wanderer. Five minutes had passed, so that his presence would soon be required upon the stage. Surely if Polly had failed to appear at the theater her sister would be aware of it. Yet there was still a chance that she had sent a hurried message to the stage director so that her character could be played by an understudy. Even Polly would scarcely wreck the play by simply failing at the last moment.
He was vaguely uneasy. He had been interested in Polly, first because of their chance acquaintance several years before when they both acted in The Castle of Life, and also because of Miss Adams’ deep affection for her protégé. The man had been unable to decide whether Polly had any talent for the career which she professed to care for so greatly.