“Here, milady! Rosa, the steward’s wife. She was taken ill at midnight.”
“Heavens! And now—?”
“She is dead. She died half an hour ago.”
The baby was shrilly clamoring for his mother.
“Go,” said the Countess; “go in and play with him. Keep him happy; do anything you like. Be quiet, darling!” she exclaimed. “I shall be back in a moment.” Upon which she rushed to the Count’s room.
The lady was blindly, insanely afraid of the cholera; nothing but her passion for her child could have been more intense than this feeling. At the first rumors of the epidemic she and her husband had fled the city, escaping to their splendid country seat—her marriage portion—in the hope that the disease would not spread thither. The place had been spared in 1836, and had even remained untouched in 1886. And now there it was, in the farmyard attached to the villa.
Disheveled and untidy, she flew into her husband’s room. Before speaking she gave two violent tugs at the bell rope.
“Have you heard?” she said, with flaming eyes.
The Count, who was phlegmatically shaving his beard, turned round, inquiring, with the soapy brush in his hand: “What?”
“Don’t you know about Rosa?”