"I—couldn't help it!" he stammered. "It was a snake-bite."
People were crowding round them with questions and exclamations. But Tudor gave utterance to neither. He only put his hand on his wife's shoulder and spoke to her.
"That will do, Audrey," he said. "There's a doctor here. Leave it to him."
At his words Audrey straightened herself, quivering all over; and then, unnerved by sheer horror, she put out her hands with an unconscious groping gesture, and fainted.
CHAPTER IV
AN UNCONVENTIONAL CALL
Audrey had been an only girl at home, and had run wild all her life amongst a host of brothers. She had seen next to nothing of the world previous to her marriage, consequently her knowledge of its ways was extremely slender.
That she had grown up headstrong and extremely unconventional was scarcely to be wondered at.