“I used to know your Pop when you’s only a kid,” said the caller, “and I know where your Mamma is now—­she’s gone down to Santa Rosa, see?”

“What’d she go there for?” Julia demanded clearly.

Mr. Palmer cast an agitated glance about Mrs. Tarbury’s dreadful drawing-room, and lowered his voice confidentially: 

“Well, d’ye see—­here’s how it is!  Your Papa’s down there in Santa Rosa.  I run acrost him in a boarding-house a few days ago, and d’ye see—­he’s sick.  That’s right,” added the speaker heavily, “he’s sick.”

“Dying?” said Julia dramatically.

“No, he ain’t dying.  It’s like this,” pursued the narrator, still with his air of secrecy, “there’s a party there that runs the boarding-house—­her name’s Lottie Clute, she’s had it for years, and she’s got on to the fact that George is insured for nine thousand dollars, d’ye see?  Well, she’s got him to promise to make the policy over to her.”

“Ha!” said Julia, interested at last.

“Well, d’ye see?” said Mr. Palmer triumphantly.  “So I come up to town last week, and I thought I’d drop in on your Mamma!  No good letting this other little lady have it all her own way, you know!”

“That’s right, too, she’s no more than a thief!” Julia commented simply.  “I don’t know what Mama can do, but I guess you can leave it to Mama!”

Mr. Palmer, agreeing eagerly to this, took his leave, after paying a hoarse tribute to the beauty of his old friend’s daughter, and Julia dismissed the matter from her mind.

She told Connie that she meant, as soon as this amateur affair was over, to try the stage in real earnest, and Connie, whose own last venture had ended somewhat flatly, was nevertheless very sanguine about Julia’s success.  She took Julia to see various managers, who were invariably interested and urbane, and Julia, deciding bitterly that she would have no more to do with her fellow-performers in the caste of “The Amazon,” had Connie accompany her to rehearsals, and went through her part with a sort of sullen hauteur.

She and Connie were down in the dressing-rooms one day after a rehearsal chatting with the woman star of a travelling stock company, who chanced to be there, when Barbara Toland suddenly came in upon them.

“Oh, Miss Page,” said Barbara in relief, “I am so glad to find you!  I don’t know whether you heard Mr. Pope announce that we’re to have our dress rehearsal on Saturday, at the yacht club in Sausalito?  There is quite a large stage.”

Julia shook her head.

“I don’t know that I can come Saturday,” she objected, only anxious to be disobliging.

“Oh, you must,” said Barbara brightly.  “Do try!  You take the one-forty-five from the Sausalito ferry, and somebody’ll meet you!  And if we should be kept later than we expect, somebody’ll bring you home!”

“I have a friend who would come for me,” said Julia stiffly, thinking of Mark.