"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 cockatoo 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 cockatoo 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 shore. 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 VASSITY, 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!