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Phil Turner, however, was by no means unwilling to be made use of in this way. The boy was a gentleman, and was as chivalrous at heart as he was honest.

He turned at once in response to her quick whisper and offered her his arm.

“There’s an old well at the back of the ruin,” he said. “Come and see it. Mind the stones.”

“That was splendid of you,” she said approvingly, as they moved away together. “Are you always so prompt? But I know you’re not. I shouldn’t have asked you, only I took you for Mr. Devereux. You are very like him at the back.”

“Never heard that before!” he responded bluntly. “Don’t believe it, either, if you will forgive my saying so.”

She laughed, a merry, ringing laugh.

“Oh, don’t you like Mr. Devereux?”

“Yes, he’s all right.” Phil seldom spoke a disparaging word of any of his comrades. “But I haven’t the smallest wish to be like him,” he added.

Audrey laughed at him again, freely, musically. She found this young officer rather more entertaining than the rest.

They reached the other side of the shrine. Here, in a debris of stones and weeds, there appeared the circular mouth of an old well, forgotten like the shrine and long disused.

Audrey examined the edge with a fastidious air, and finally sat down on it. The place was flooded with moonlight.

“I wish I were a man,” she said suddenly.

“Good Heavens! Why?”

He asked the question in amazement.

“I should like to be your equal,” she told him gaily. “I should like to do and say to you just exactly what I liked.”

Phil considered this seriously.

“You can do both without being my equal,” he remarked at length in his bluntest tone, “that is, if you care to condescend.”

“Goodness!” laughed Audrey. “That’s the only pretty thing I have ever heard you say. I am sure it must be your first attempt. Now, isn’t it?”

He laughed.

“And it wasn’t strictly honest,” proceeded Audrey daringly. “You know you don’t think that of any woman under the sun.”

He did not contradict her. He had a feeling that she was fooling him, but somehow he rather liked it.

“What about the women under the moon?” he said. “Perhaps they are different?”

She nodded merrily.

“Perhaps they are,” she conceded. “Certainly the men are. Now, you are about the stodgiest person I know by daylight or lamplight except–except–” She stopped. “No, I don’t mean that!” she said, with an impish smile. “There is no exception.”

Phil was frowning a little, but he looked relieved at her amendment.

“Thank you!” he said brusquely. “I shall never dare to come near you after that.”

“Except by moonlight?” she suggested, with the impudent audacity of a child.

What reply he would have made to that piece of nonsense he sometimes wondered afterward, but circumstances prevented his making any. The words had only just passed her lips when she sprang to her feet with a wild shriek of horror, shaking her arm with frantic violence.

“A snake!” she cried. “Take it away! Take it away! It’s on my wrist!”

Phil Turner, though young, was accustomed to keep his wits about him, and, luckily for the girl, her agony did not scare them away. He had seized her arm in a fierce grip almost before her frenzied appeal was uttered. A small snake was coiled round her wrist, and he tore it away with his free hand, not caring how he grasped it. He tried to fling the thing from him, but somehow his hold upon it was not sufficient. Before he knew it the creature had shot up his sleeve.

The next instant he had shaken it down again with a muffled curse and was trampling it savagely and vindictively into the stones at his feet.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, wheeling sharply.

“No,” gasped Audrey, “no! But you–“

“Yes, the little beast’s bitten me,” he returned. “You see–“

“Oh, where, where?” she cried. “Let me see! Quick, quick! Something must be done. Can’t you suck it?”