“What do you want?” Laurence threw at him over her shoulder, not deigning to pause for the fraction of a second in her caged-tigress walk.
“The staròstá, Your Highness, waits below, and would crave the boon of a short audience.”
Laurence turned irritably and came toward Garrassime.
“Indeed! Then let him know that I have no time to waste upon such as he!” she said, contemptuously.
Garrassime recoiled as if he had been struck, and, instinctively retreating to the nearest wall, put as great a distance between himself and his mistress as space would allow.
“Well, why don’t you go?” she demanded, stamping her narrow foot, “instead of looking at me like a distressed owl. D’you hear?”
“I will go—Highness—I will go—but the staròstá reports two cases of typhus in the village—at least he thinks it is typhus, and he prays a doctor may be sent for, and disinfectants, and—”
“Typhus!” Laurence cried, falling back in her turn. “And you dare to approach me after speaking to that infected man! Go away! Go away! This instant!”
But Garrassime did not move. For once, on the contrary, he straightened himself to his full and enormous height, as if no longer in presence of a loftier personality, and when he spoke it was in altered accents.
“There is no risk, no danger!” he said, as he would have done to reassure a fretful child. “He, the staròstá, has not been near the houses where there is sickness—but there will be worse erelong if one does not act promptly. Had there been risk of contagion I would not have gone near him, for Prince Piotr’s sake—indeed, Your Highness, not for mine, but for Prince Piotr’s.”