Sir Gerald Seymour Stukeley, apoplectically angry. Some silly
fool, he understood, had fainted or something--probably a puling
tight-laced fool of a woman who starved herself to keep slim. People
who wanted to faint should stay and do it at home--not come creating
disturbances and interruptions at Monksmead garden-parties....

And then he saw a couple of young men and Lucille striving to raise
the recumbent body of a man. The General snorted as snorts the
wart-hog in love and war, or the graceful hippopotamus in the river.

"What the Devil's all this?" he growled. "Some poor fella fainted with
the exertions of putting?" A most bitter old gentleman.

Lucille turned to him and his fierce gaze fell upon the pale,
contorted, and tear-stained face of Dam.

The General flushed an even deeper purple, and the stick he held
perpendicularly slowly rose to horizontal, though he did not raise his
hand.

He made a loud but wholly inarticulate sound.

Haddon Berners, enjoying himself hugely, volunteered the information.

"He saw a little grass-snake and yelled out. Then he wept and fainted.
Coming round now. Got the funks, poor chap."

Lucille's hands closed (the thumbs correctly on the knuckles of the
second fingers), and, for a moment, it was in her heart to smite the
Haddock on the lying mouth with the straight-from-the-shoulder drive
learned in days of yore from Dam, and practised on the punching-ball
with great assiduity. Apparently the Haddock realized the fact for he
skipped backward with agility.

"He is ill, Grumper dear," she said instead. "He has had a kind of
fit. Perhaps he had sunstroke in India, and it has just affected him
now in the sun...."

Grumper achieved the snort of his life.

It may have penetrated Dam's comatose brain, indeed, for at that
moment, with a moan and a shudder, he struggled to a sitting posture.

"The Snake," he groaned, and collapsed again.

"What the Devil!" roared the General. "Get up, you miserable, whining
cur! Get indoors, you bottle-fed squalling workhouse brat! Get out of
it, you decayed gentlewoman!" ... The General bade fair to have a fit
of his own.

Lucille flung herself at him.

"Can't you see he's very ill, Grumper? Have you no heart at all? Don't
be so cruel ... and ... stupid."

The General gasped.... Insults!... From a chit of a girl!... "Ill!" he
roared. "What the Devil does he want to be ill for now, here, to-day?
I never ..."

Dam struggled to his feet wit