ou know where to
find me if you want me. Only you'd better send after me to-night if you
do--to-morrow I may be absent."

He smiled, and drew on his gloves leisurely, eyeing meanwhile the
discomfited editor, who was furtively rubbing his shoulder where the
lash had stung it somewhat severely.

"I'm exceedingly glad I've hurt you, Mr. Grubbs," he said blandly. "And
the next time you want to call me your brother in literature, pray
reflect on the manner in which my fraternal affection displayed itself!
_good_ morning!"

And he took his departure with a quiet step and serene manner, leaving
Snawley-Grubbs to his own meditations, which were far from agreeable. He
was not ignorant of the influence Beau Lovelace possessed, both on the
press and in society--he was a general favorite,--a man whose opinions
were quoted, and whose authority was accepted everywhere. If he appeared
to answer a charge of assault against Grubbs, and defended his own case,
he certainly would have the best of it. He might--he would have to pay a
fine, but what did he care for that? He would hold up the _Snake_ and
its proprietor to the utmost ridicule and opprobrium--his brilliant
satire and humor would carry all before it--and he, Snawley-Grubbs,
would be still more utterly routed and humiliated. Weighing all these
considerations carefully in his mind, the shrinking editor decided to
sit down under his horsewhipping in silence and resignation.

It was not a very lofty mode of action--still, it was the safest. Of
course Violet Vere would spread the story all through _her_ particular
"set"--it made him furious to think of this yet there was no help for
it. He would play the martyr, he thought--the martyr to the cause of
truth,--the injured innocent entrapped by false information--he might
possibly gain new supporters and sympathizers in this way if he played
his cards carefully. He turned to the daily paper, and saw there
chronicled the death of Sir Francis Lennox. It was true, then. Well! he
was not at all affected by it--he merely committed the dead man in the
briefest and strongest language to the very lowest of those low and
sulphurous regions over which Satan is supposed to have full sway. Not a
soul regretted Sir Francis--not even the Vere, whom he had kept and
surrounded with every luxury for five years. Only one person, a fair,
weary faced woman away in Germany shed a few tears over the lawyer's
black-bordered letter that announced his death