'For goodness' sake remember what you're saying,' said Dick, interrupting, and trembling as if for his life. He cast an anxious glance around to see if the lady in question was within hearing. Fortunately she was not on the stage. The chorus crowded timidly forward looking like a school in their walking-dresses. The carpenters had ceased to hammer, and were peeping down from the flies; Kate stood balancing herself and staring blindly at those who surrounded her. Leslie and Montgomery, in the position of old friends, were endeavouring to soothe her, whilst Mortimer and Dubois argued passionately as to when they had seen her drunk for the first time. The first insisted that when she had joined them at Hanley she was a bit inebriated; the latter declared that it had begun with the champagne on her wedding day. 'Don't you remember, Dick was married with a scratched face?' 'To judge from present appearances,' said the comedian, forcing his words slowly through his nose, 'he's likely to die with one.' At this sally three supers retired into the wings holding their sides, and Dubois, furious at being outdone in a joke, walked away in high dudgeon, calling Mortimer an unfeeling brute. In the meantime the drunken row was waxing more furious every moment. Struggling frantically with her friends, Kate called attention to the sticking-plaster on Dick's face, and declared that she would do for him. 'You see what I gave him last night, and he deserved it. Oh! the beast! And I'll give him more; and if you knew all you wouldn't blame me. It was he who seduced me, who got me to run away from home, and he deserts me for other women. But he shan't, he shan't, he shan't; I'll kill him first; yes, I will, and nobody shall stop me.' Dick listened quite broken with shame for himself and for her; as an excuse for the absence of his wife from the theatre he had told Mortimer and Hayes that London did not agree with her, and that she had to spend most of her time at the seaside. All had condoled with him, and when they were searching London for a second lady, all had agreed that Mrs. Lennox was just the person they wanted for the part. What a pity, they said, she was not in town. At the present moment Dick wished her the other side of Jordan. For all he knew, she might remain screaming at him the whole day, and if Mrs. Forest came back--well, he didn't know what would happen; the whole game would then be up the spout. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to tell Montgomery of the danger his piece was in; he and Kate had always been friends; she might listen to him.