Altogether a charming little _ménage_, of which the presiding deity is Miss Fitzallan, leading lady at the Bagatelle Theatre. They have been playing “Hearts _versus_ Diamonds” at the theatre to-night, a comedy in three long acts, with a lot of emotional acting, which, when it goes on week after week, is, to say the least, a trifle fatiguing. The Prince and Princess, accompanied by a party of foreign royalties, have been amongst the audience, and have been demonstrative in their approval. Altogether the evening has been exciting, and the actors are glad when it is over, and each one can drop down from his stilts of artificial feeling to the level of real life. Miss Fitzallan is tired too; her _rôle_ has been the most arduous of all, perhaps, save that of the _jeune amoureux_, who has had to play the handsome but rejected lover, with a passion he can simulate better than he can feel. So the leading lady sinks back into her luxurious little light blue brougham, with an enormous sensation of relief, and is driven quickly to her bijou house, where a small but exquisite supper is laid out. The covers are for two. Herself and the _jeune amoureux_. Flora Fitzallan is past first youth, though she has never owned to more than twenty-three for the last ten years; but dress and the skilful touch of art completely conceal any ravages that time may have imprinted on her face. On a primary glance, she is beautiful as a dream. On a second and more leisurely inspection, an acute and impartial observer may detect some undeniable flaws in her physiognomy. Her eyes are a great deal too wide apart, although they are of a velvety brown, and melting in expression, and their brows and lashes are perfect. The nose is a little too _retroussé_ or tip-tilted, according to Tennysonian phraseology, and her mouth is large, though the lips are red and tempting. She is a woman on a large scale, with a fulness of form which promises to develop into unromantic fat; but, supper finished, as she stands in a long, trailing white silk, with brilliants sparkling on her hair and neck, and ears and arms, there is really so much grace about her careless attitude, so much of imperial dignity about her, that it is impossible to stop and analyse her defects when her claims to admiration are so evident. She is clever, too, a sharp cleverness with nothing _spirituelle_ about it, and, considering her birth and position in the social world, she is ladylike and even fastidious in her tastes. She is quite a woman of the people, with no mysterious aristocracy hanging over her advent into the world. Her father was a bookmaker, well known to every sporting man, and her mother had been one of the ballet at the Alhambra, until years and obesity had displaced her from that honourable berth.