"Where is your mistress?" said the younger of the two men.
"My mistress is in the drawing-room, my lord," the servant answered.
"Oh, all right! Take our coats. We will go and find her at once."
The servant took the coats and hats, and the two men walked down a wide-carpeted passage, brilliantly lit by globes in the roof, which made their stiff white shirt-fronts glitter like talc, and opened a heavy door of oak.
The villa was the home of Miss Mimi Addington, the leading musical comedy actress of London—the star of the Frivolity.
The young man with the light hair and the dissipated expression was Lord Bellina, an Irish viscount.
He had succeeded to the title some three years before, and to a very large fortune, which had come into the impoverished Irish family owing to a marriage with the daughter of a wealthy Liverpool manufacturer.
The short Jewish-looking man who accompanied him was Mr. Andrew Levison, the theatrical entrepreneur and leesee of the Frivolity Theatre, in which Lord Bellina had invested several thousand pounds.
Lord Bellina opened the door of the room and entered, followed by Mr. Levison.
Upon one of the divans, wearing a long tea-gown of Indian red, Mimi Addington was lounging. Her face was very pale, and on this occasion quite destitute of the little artistic touches with which she was wont to embellish it. The expression was strained and angry, and the beautiful eyes shone with a hard, fierce glitter.