"I'll go."
"You?"
"Yes, with Mrs. Sibley. I've just caught sight of her; see, she is over there talking to Johnny. If I tell her how it is—what I want to do, she'll understand, she'll be glad to help; and Dorothea will listen to her, when she wouldn't to you or to me, I dare say."
"Well, that's a much more sensible plan than yours, Kate," commented Schuyler Van der Berg, as Hope darted off; "but all the same it's my opinion that Miss Dorothea Dering isn't going to be kept from that matinée performance, even if they catch her in time."
"Which they won't," spoke up Peter, as he looked at his watch.
CHAPTER XX.
And Peter was right; for, as Mrs. Sibley and Hope neared the theatre, they saw Dorothea's nodding plumes just disappearing through the wide open doorway.
"And we're too late," cried Hope,—"too late, after all."
"Too late to try to prevent the girl from going into the theatre,—yes, and I thought we should be when we started; there had been too much time lost before you spoke to me. We should have taken the car that preceded the one that we came in; but I doubt if it would have done any good if we had been earlier. But I'll tell you what we'll do now. We'll go in to the matinée ourselves. Miss Marr," smiling down at Hope, "would be perfectly willing that you should go under my chaperonage."