taxi. Two taxis, I mean."

One taxi was piled high with the new and princely pile of "leather
goods." Hat-boxes, dress-baskets, two Innovation trunks, a week-end bag,
and a dressing-case with crystal and ivory fittings. The other taxi bore
off the small, "my-Sunday-out"-looking figure of Miss Million and the
equally small, almost equally badly dressed figure of Miss Million's
maid.

We drove first to the Kensington Hostelry and picked up the old luggage.
By the side of the new it looked not even as respectable as an Irish
emigrant's; it looked like some Kentish hop-picker's! We made the driver
unstrap and open one of the large new dress-baskets. And into this we
dumped the hold-all and the tin trunk that seemed to be labelled "My
First Place." Then I ordered him to drive to the Hotel Cecil, and off we
whirled again.

Our arrival at the Cecil was marked by quite a dramatic little picture;
like something on the stage, I thought.

For as our taxi swept around the big circle of the courtyard of the
hotel, as it glided up exactly opposite the middle door and a couple of
gorgeously uniformed commissionaires stepped forward, the air was rent
by the long, piercingly shrill notes of a posthorn. There was the
staccato clatter of horses' hoofs, and there rattled and jingled up to
the entrance a coach of lemon-yellow-and-black, with four magnificent
white horses, driven by a very big and strongly built, ruddy-faced,
white-toothed young man, wearing a tall white hat, a black-and-white
check suit, yellow gloves, a hunting tie with a black pearl pin in it,
and one large red rose.

This gay and startling apparition took our eyes and our attention off
everything else for a moment. Million's grey eyes were indeed popping
out of her head like hat-pegs as the young man leapt lightly down from
the coach. She was staring undisguisedly at him. And I saw him turn and
give one very hard, straight glance--not at Million--not at me. His
eyes, which were very blue and bright, were all for that taxi full of
very imposing-looking new luggage just behind us. Then he turned to his
friends on the coach; several other young men, also dressed like Solomon
in all his glory, and a couple of ladies, very powdery, with cobalt-blue
eyelashes, and smothers of golden hair, and pretty frocks that looked as
if they'd got into them with the shoehorn. (I don't think skirts can
possibly get any tighter than they are at this present moment of June,
1914, unles