Lorelei broke in reprovingly.  “Lilas!  Croft is old enough to be your mother.”

“Yes, and she’s old enough to have some sense, but she hasn’t got it.”

“I hope I drop dead if—­”

“I hope you do,” snapped the indignant girl.  “I told you to attend to them; now I’ve nothing but soiled ones.”

The dresser began to weep silently.  She was a small, timid old woman, upon whose manifest need of employment Lorelei had taken pity some time before.  Her forgetfulness had long been a trial to both her employers.

“That’s right; turn on the flood-gates,” mocked Lilas, “You stop that sniveling or I’ll give you something to cry for.  I’m nervous enough to-night without having you in hysterics.  Remember, if it ever happens again you’ll go—­and you’ll take something with you to think about.”  Seizing the cleanest pair of gloves at hand, she flung out of the room in a fine fury.

“You won’t let her—­fire me?  I need work, I do,” quavered Mrs. Croft.

“Now, now.  Don’t mind her temper.  But you really ought to see to her gloves when—­”

“I hope I drop dead this minute if I didn’t send ’em out the very day she told me.”

“Croft, you’re fibbing.  You know Lilas is excitable.”

“Excitable?” Croft wiped her eyes with a corner of her apron.  “Is that what you call it?  How ever you can bear her I don’t see, and you a nice girl.  She won’t do you no good, Miss Knight.”

“Oh, pshaw!  She was nervous.”

“I should think she would be.  I’ll be glad if her millionaire takes her out of the business, like she thinks he will.  Poor man!  He’s laying up trouble for himself, that he is.  She’ll land him in the divorce court—­with her flesh-light photographs.”

Lorelei swung around from her mirror.  “What do you mean?”

“Oh, I heard her and that Jew—­I beg pardon, Miss Knight.  You ain’t a Jew, are you?”

“What about the flash-lights?”

“There’s so many Hebrew girls in the profession—­Not that I don’t like ’em, you understand—­”

“Go on.”

“Well, I heard enough to know that she’s up to some deviltry—­her and that Maxey Melcher.  They’ve got a photographer and witnesses.  Your brother is one of ’em.”

“Jim?  What—­”

“It’s true.  It’s a bad crowd Mister Jim’s in with.  And there’s something big in the air.  Millions it is.  And her saying she’ll box my ears.  The hussy!  I’ve heard ’em talking before to-night.”

“Tell me everything, Croft—­quickly.”

“I have.  Only you better warn your brother—­”

The assistant stage-manager thrust his head through the curtains, shouting:  “Your cue, Miss Knight.  What the devil—­”

With a gasp Lorelei leaped to her feet and fled from the room.

Mrs. Croft shook her head mournfully, snuffled a few times, then scowled at the disarray Lilas had left behind.  She breathed a feeble malediction upon the cause of it, seized a hat-pin, and, holding it like a dagger, thrust it viciously into first one, then another of the gowns hanging on their hooks.