"Business is very good. The company is far better than you'd expect to see at the salaries paid, but every one's so devilish glad to get something to do in the summer that they are willing to work on half pay. Old Williamson's a first-class stage-manager--queer thing he never gets into New York, and he's taking so much pains with Miss Lawton, or Miss Sylvia Latimer, as you've got her billed here, that everyone is talking and wondering about it. But there's no mystery to me in this matter any longer. I went to her door yesterday to hand in a few pounds of mail from her people--they must all write every day of the week to her. She was not in the room, but the door was ajar, and I entered and placed the letters on the table. As I did so the wind fluttered open the leaves of a play-book--it was 'Romeo and Juliet,' and the lines of Juliet were all pencil-marked for study. So that's the game, is it? That's why the girl is hidden under a stage-name, while she is learning her acting a-b-abs out here in the West? That's why I suddenly become of service to you? I am to guard this fruit from wicked little boys who may look over the orchard wall and spy it out? Oh, you think you are immeasurably deep, don't you? Well, you're not! But you're the damndest, luckiest beggar on earth! And you're smart--oh, yes, you're smart, where number one comes in! "What a card you have found! and how cleverly you will play it, and gather in the stakes--for yourself! Beautiful, talented, poor, and good--now! Don't give me your sneer, please! Even a drunkard knows an honest woman when he comes up with one. And this girl is a wonder! She is innocent, though she's not ignorant. Theoretically she knows of sin's existence--her stories, poems, and plays have all made her so monstrous wise; but, practically, she is as much of a child as was that other girl who came to you to learn to be an actress. Damn you! Oh, yes, I know this girl has gifts my sister Bess never had, but--purity is the subject now, and Sybil Lawton looks at you with precisely the same innocent, dauntless eyes that made my sister irresistible. Poor little maid! If it were not that she and the Missus, and even this last, your pet devil of a divorcée, were all such fair women, I'd think your sending me on here to guard this girl would have made me suspicious of another sort of game! See here, Thrall, don't you come any of your dam'd drooping-eyelid and lowered-voice effect over this girl! Leave her alone, if you know when you are well off. I know I've been your dog, your cur, but curs snap sometimes, and a silence, however long, may be broken. No, we don't want any Bessie in this! Stewart Thrall, manager--even Stewart Thrall, Romeo to the loveliest Juliet God ever made! But,