"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!"