"Not yet," it said malignantly. "You have an agony of terror to go through before that. When I see your eyes close I shall know that the time has come, and I shall strike my fangs into that white throat of yours, and you will recover just sense enough to feel what pain it is to die!" Daphne would very possibly have closed her eyes at once and received the death stroke rather than listen any longer to the creature's threats, but she had just become aware that help was at hand. The person she believed to be a spy was stealing up, treading noiselessly over the velvet turf, his hands already outstretched with the evident purpose of seizing the reptile from behind. If she could only engage it in conversation for a minute or two, there was still a chance for her.
"I have done you no harm," she said, after moistening her dry lips. "Why should you hate me like this?"
"Ask Xuriel, my master," replied the serpent, "who called me into being for no other purpose than to put you to death."
"But I have done Xuriel no injury."
"Then it may be you are an enemy of the Count, whose servant he is. I know not—nor is it any matter. All I know is that I have been sent here to—" and here it broke off in a dreadful strangled scream as a pair of strong hands clutched it firmly by the throat and dragged it writhing into the open. Daphne sat helplessly looking on as her rescuer struggled with the thing, which had wound its coils round his waist and leg, and was trying hard to free its head and strike. He held the venomous head at arm's-length, gripping its throat tight, while the foam slavered from its distended jaws, but it was stronger than he, and, as he recognised this, he urged Daphne to save herself while there was time.
She had already risen, as she had got over any tendency to faint, but she had no intention of leaving him to his fate. She had just seen in a pocket of his leather apron those big garden-shears which she had noticed him plying with such marked incompetence, and it occurred to her suddenly that they might be of some real service now. She ran up and, watching her opportunity, succeeded in whipping them out. Then she stepped behind the serpent, and forced the blades together just below the part of its neck that was in her champion's grasp. There was a highly unpleasant scrunch and jar as they closed, but she pressed with all her strength, until the reptile's spine was cut through and its body uncoiled itself from the young man and went writhing and rolling blindly through the grass.
Daphne dropped the shears and got out of its way in sudden panic. "It's not dead! I'm sure it isn't!" she cried to the stranger, whom she had somehow ceased to think of as a spy.
"It is harmless enough now, fair lady," he said as he tossed its crested head into the undergrowth, "thanks to your courage."
"I never killed anything before," she said. "I hated doing it, and—it seems such a silly way to kill a snake!"
"It succeeded," he said, wondering how those small slim hands could have had the strength. "I could not have held it much longer. You have saved my life."