LONDON'S LOVE.
ENGLAND'S PREMIER COMEDIENNE!

So that was who she was!

Beside her on the couch a couple of younger girls, also rather "stagily"
dressed, were hanging on every word that fell from the music-hall
favourite's vermilioned lips.

With her back to me, and with her chair drawn a little aside from the
others, there sat yet another woman. She was enormously tall and slim,
and eccentrically clad in Oriental draperies of some sombre, richly
patterned stuff. This gave her the air of some graceful snake.

She turned and twisted the whole of her long, lissom person, now putting
up a hand to smooth her slim throat, now stretching out a slender ankle;
but all the time posing, and admiring the poses in the nearest mirror.
She was scarcely listening to Miss Vi Vassity's chatter.

"Tea? Any more, anybody?" Miss Vassity's black eyes glanced about her.
"Baby? Sybil? Lady G.?" (the latter to the cobra-woman).

"You, my dear?" turning to some one who was hidden behind her. "Half a
cup--oh, come on now. It'll have to be a whole cup; we don't break our
china here, as my dear old mother used to say at Baa-lamb.

"You know I sprang from the suburbs, girls, don't you? Better to spring
than to sink, eh, Miss Millions--and trillions? Here you are; I'll pour
it out."

The music-hall idol leant forward to the tea-tray. Beyond her sumptuous
shoulder I caught a glimpse at last of the woman who'd been hidden.

I gasped with surprise. She was my Miss Million!

Yes! So these were the friends whom Mr. Burke had sent to call on her!
And there she sat--or shrank--she who was supposed to be the hostess of
the party!

Beneath her expensive new hat--quite the wrong one to wear with that
particular frock, which she changed when I went out--her face was
wide-eyed and dazed. She who had shown so much self-confidence at her
last tea-party with just those two young men had lost it all in the
midst of these other people.

There she sat, silent, lips apart, bewildered eyes moving from one to
the other. Between the languid, posing cobra-woman and the gay,
chattering, sulphur-crested cockatoo, she looked like a small hypnotised
rabbit.

I slipped up to her with my best professional manner on.

"Did you want me for anything, Miss?" I asked in my lowest and most
respectful tone.

Poor little Million's face lighted up into a look of the most pathetic
relief as she turned and beheld her one frien