“Miss V------ is a very young girl, who has seen very little of the world. She is not only exceptionally talented but pretty, attractive, and charming. Consequently she is admired by the idlers who have time to kill in dangling after young women of the Stage--and nothing better to do. Miss V------ is much sought after by matrons who are ever on the look-out for pretty girls to attract men to their dances and their ‘week-end’ visits. Such women care nothing at all about a girl’s career or whether they ruin it or not--and they will ruin it, every time, if the girl is weak or foolish enough to be persuaded. Miss V------ likes this kind of attention, which is natural, but it won’t do--not if she is to remain with _me_. No big man or woman has time for frivolities; it is either one thing or the other: we work and work and rise and rise; or else we try to flutter through life on butterfly wings--and then we fall by the wayside. “Miss V------ has, I am informed, been neglecting her duties at the theatre. True, at present she has only the minor position of an understudy; but she should at least be conscientious enough to attend to its duties. She knows very well that she should keep Mr. L------ informed of her whereabouts. She has no right, no excuse, to go anywhere, or to be in any place, where he cannot reach her at a moment’s notice, by telephone. An understudy is just a reserve soldier, subject to instant call. If Mr. Dean had been well, of course he would have attended to this matter of Miss V------‘s neglect. But as it is, Mr. L------ has too many details to look after. Her conduct is not fair to him, to say nothing of me, nor does it show any proper respect for the theatre, for Miss V------ so to ignore her obligations. Last evening, through an indisposition, Miss------, whom she understudies, was nearly obliged to remain away. If she had done so, the house would have been dismissed, and Mr. L------ would have been discharged, through her negligence. Have you any conception what it would mean to me to disappoint an audience, _in my theatre_?