serene, triumphant smile of a successful athlete. Suddenly a loud peal
of laughter echoed from the doorway,--a woman stood there, richly
dressed in silk and fur, with diamonds sparkling in her ears and
diamonds clasping the long boa at her throat. It was Violet Vere.

"Why, Snawley!" she cried with cheerful familiarity. "How are you? All
broken, and no one to pick up the pieces! Serve you right! Got it at
last, eh? Don't get up! You look so comfortable!"

"Bodily assault," gasped Grubbs. "I'll summons--call the police--call,"
his voice died away in inarticulate gurglings, and raising himself, he
sat up on the floor in a sufficiently abject and ludicrous posture,
wiping the tears of pain from his eyes. Beau looked at the female
intruder and recognized her at once. He saluted her with cold courtesy,
and turned again to Grubbs.

"_Will_ you apologize?"

"No--I--I _won't_!"

Beau made another threatening movement--Miss Vere interposed.

"Stop a bit," she said, regarding him with her insolent eyes, in which
lurked, however, an approving smile. "I don't know who you are, but you
seem a fighting man! Don't go at him again till I've had a word. I say,
Grubbs! you've been hitting at me in your trashy paper."

Grubbs still sat on the floor groaning.

"You must eat those words," went on the Vere calmly. "Eat 'em up with
sauce for dinner. The 'admired actress well known at the Brilliant,' has
nothing to do with the Bruce-Errington man,--not she! He's a duffer, a
regular stiff one--no go about him anyhow. And what the deuce do you
mean by calling me an offending dama. Keep your oaths to yourself, will
you?"

Beau Lovelace was amused. Grubbs turned his watering eye from one to the
other in wretched perplexity. He made an effort to stand up and
succeeded.

"I'll have you arrested, sir!" he exclaimed shaking his fists at Beau,
and quivering with passion, "on a charge of bodily assault--shameful
bodily assault, sir!"

"All right!" returned Beau coolly. "If I were fined a hundred pounds for
it, I should think it cheap for the luxury of thrashing such a hound!"

Grubbs quaked at the determined attitude and threatening eye of his
assailant, and turned for relief to Miss Vere whose smile, however, was
not sympathetic.

"You'd better cave in!" she remarked airily. "You've got the worst of
it, you know!"

She had long been on confidential terms with the _Snake_ proprietor, and
she spoke to him now with the candor of an old