"And did you happen to tell him," she asked, "about this dressmaker in _The Girl Up-stairs_ who looked so wonderfully like Rose? Did you offer to take him round to see for himself?" "I tell you there's nothing to that!" said John. He'd been caught in the same trap, it seemed. "What's the use of butting in? If anything has gone wrong with those two ..." "You've always said there hasn't," Violet interrupted. "And you've said," he countered, "that you were sure there had. Well, then, if there's a chance of it, why run the risk, just for nothing?" Jimmy, as it happened, had never heard even a suggestion that Rose and Rodney were on any other terms than those of perfect amity. He hoped they'd go on and tell him more. So to prevent their becoming suddenly discreet, he promptly changed the subject. "I thought you had a taboo against the Globe," he said to Violet. "How did you happen to go there?" "John went while I was in New York," she explained. [Illustration: "Don't you know that that was Rose Aldrich?"] "He's--well, a regular fan, you know. He hasn't missed a show there in years. And he was _too_ queer and absent-minded and fidgety for words, when I came back. I thought a bank must be going to fail, or something. And when he said, after dinner last night, that he felt like going to a musical show, of course I said I'd go with him. And when I found it was the Globe--he already had tickets--I was too--kind and sorry for him to make a fuss. Well, and then she came out on the stage, and I knew what it was all about." "Where did you sit?" Jimmy asked. "Fifth row," said John. Violet hadn't got the bearing of Jimmy's question. "Oh, you couldn't mistake her," she said, "any more than you could in this room, now." "Do you mean," John asked, "that she might have recognized us?" "They can't," said Violet, "across the footlights,--can they?" Jimmy nodded. "In a little theater like that," he said, "anywhere in the house. But it seems she didn't recognize you." "Look here!" said Violet. "Don't you know, in your own mind, just as well as that you're standing there, that that was Rose Aldrich?" Jimmy dropped down into a big chair. "Well," he said, "I'm willing to accept it as a working hypothesis." "You men!" said Violet. Dinner was announced just then, and the theme had to be dismissed until at last they were left alone with the dessert. "What breaks me all up," Violet burst out, abandoning the pretense of picking over her walnuts, and showing, with a little outflung gesture, how impatient she had been to take it up, "what breaks me all up is how this'll hit Frederica. She just adores Rodney and she's been simply wonderful to Rose--for him, of course." Neither of the men said anything, but she felt a little stir of protest from both of them and qualified the last phrase.