Two minutes later she found herself alone in the small apartment where the actress changed her costumes for the different acts and scenes.
Queenie had not yet come in. The manager had detained her a few minutes and Sydney had time to draw breath and look about her while she waited for her sister.
There was not much to see. The room was dingy and sparely furnished, as the dressing-room of a theater is apt to be.
Costumes were laid over the backs of chairs, and the maid who should have been guarding them was "off duty," gossiping, no doubt, with some humble attache of the place. There was little to interest one, and Sydney grew impatient.
Suddenly she saw a letter lying carelessly on the toilet table. She took it up and looked at it.
It was addressed to Madame De Lisle, and had never been unsealed.
"It has been left here during the first act, and Queenie has never seen it," she said to herself. "It looks like my husband's writing. I will see what he has to say to her."
Recklessly, desperately, she tore it open, and drew out the sheet of note paper.
"My Darling," it said simply, "meet me at the western door after the first act is over. I must see you a moment."
No name was signed to the mysterious note, but Sydney felt sure that it was her husband's writing.