MISS MILLION and her callers were having tea in the bigger "lounge," or whatever they call the gilded hall behind the great gla.s.s doors which shut it off from the main entrance.

Now, this was the first time that my mistress had plucked up courage to take a meal downstairs since we had come to the Cecil.

I wondered how she'd been getting on. I must see!

So, still in my outdoor things, I pa.s.sed the gla.s.s doors. I walked into the big tea-room. There were palms, and much gilding, and sofas, and dark-eyed, weary-looking waiters wheeling round little carts spread with dainties, and offering the array of eclairs and flat apple-cakes to the different groups--largely made up of American visitors--who were sitting at the plate-gla.s.s-topped tables.

I couldn't see Million--Miss Million's party--anywhere at first!

I looked about....

At the further end of the place a string band, half-hidden behind greenery, was playing "I Shall Dream of You the Whole Night." Peals of light laughter and ripples of talk came from a gay-looking group of frocks--with just one man's coat amongst them--gathered around a table near the band.

I noticed that the eyes of everybody within earshot were turning constantly towards this table. So I looked, too.

At whom were they all staring? At a plump, bright-haired woman in all-white, who was obviously entertaining the party--to say nothing of the rest of the room.

She had a figure that demanded a good deal of French lingerie blouse, but not much skirt. The upright feather in her hat was yellow; jewelled slides glittered in her bra.s.s-bright hair; her eyes were round and very black.

She reminded me of a sulphur-crested, white c.o.c.katoo I had seen at the Zoo.

But where had I seen her before? She puzzled and fascinated me. I stood a little way off, forgetting my errand, watching this vivacious lady, the centre of the group. She was waving her cigarette to punctuate her remarks----

"Oh, young Jim's one of the best--the very best, my dears. Tiptop family and all. Who says blood doesn't tell, Leo? Ah! he's a good old pal o'

mine, is the Hon. Jim Burke, specially on Fridays (treasury day, my dear); but it's the Army I'm potty about myself. The Captain (and dash the whiskers), that's the tiger that puts Leo and his lot in the shade----"

Here followed a wave of the cigarette towards the only man of the party.

He was stout and astrachan-haired; a Jew even from the back view.

"Give me the military man, what, what," prattled on the c.o.c.katoo lady, whose cigarette seemed to spin a web about her of blue floating smoke wisps. "That's the boy that makes a hole in Vi's virgin heart!"

A fan-like gesture of her left hand, jewelled to the knuckles, upon the spread of the lady's embroidered blouse emphasised this declaration.

"Them's the fellers! Sons of the Empire--or of the Alhambra!" wound up the c.o.c.katoo lady with a rollicking laugh.

And as she laughed I caught her full face and the flash of a line of prominent, fascinatingly white teeth that lighted up her whole expression as a white wave lights up the whole sh.o.r.e.

Then I knew where I'd seen her before--in a hundred theatrical posters between the Hotel Cecil and the Bond Street tea-shop that I had just left. Yes, I'd seen this lady's highly coloured portrait above the announcement:

MISS VI Va.s.sITY, 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 Va.s.sity's chatter.

"Tea? Any more, anybody?" Miss Va.s.sity'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 c.o.c.katoo, 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 friend in that tea-room.

"Ow! S-Smith! Come in, have you?" she exclaimed, giggling nervously.

Then, turning to the music-hall artiste, she explained: "This is my lady's-maid!"

"And very nice, too!" said Miss Vi Va.s.sity promptly, with one of those black-eyed glances that seemed to swing round from me to Million, thence to the cobra-woman, the other girls, the stout young Jew, all of whom were staring hard at me.

She ended up in a lightning-quick wink and a quick turn to the long gla.s.s that stood beside her teacup which, I suppose, had contained what those people the other day called a rattlesnake c.o.c.ktail.

"I didn't send for you, Smith, but never mind since you're here," my young mistress said, almost clinging to me in her nervousness. "You can pop upstairs and begin to put out my evening things, as usual----"

"Extra smart to-night, Smith, extra smart; she's comin' on to a box at the Palace to see little Me in my great Dazzling act," put in the actress. "Got to be very dressy for that, old dear. Gala night at the Opera isn't in it.

"The black pearl rope you'll wear, of course. And your diamond fender to wave your hand to me in, please!"

"Ow!" breathed the dismayed heiress. "Well, I--I don't know as how I'd expected----"

She hasn't acquired any ornaments at all as yet. And, somehow, I knew that this black-eyed, bright-haired actress knew that perfectly well.

For some reason she was pulling poor Million's leg just as mercilessly as her precious friend the Honourable Jim----

Even as I was thinking this there strolled up the room to our group the cool, detached, and prosperous-looking figure of the Honourable Jim himself--the man who had just got out of my taxi at Charing Cross.

Miss Vi jingled her gold mesh vanity-bag at him with its hanging cl.u.s.ter of gold charms, gold pencil, gold cigarette-case.