Alone, or practically so, in the grim old cradle of her husband’s race--for her maternal instincts had remained utterly undeveloped, and her little son’s absence was always preferred by her to his company--Laurence found time hanging wearily on her hands. From morning till night, dressed with the costliness and splendor she was so fond of, she paced about the long enfilades of salons and galleries between which all the doors remained wide open, Russian fashion, bemoaning her unlucky fate. Now and again she paused before one or another of the interminable lines of windows fronting upon the _steppe_--the rooms were kept so warm that there was no rime on the glass--and could have shrieked aloud at the awful immensity stretched out beneath her. To this peculiar mind the prospect held no beauty, no grandeur even, though it possessed both in a great and marked measure. The Castle itself, built as it were from the rock whereon it stands, is gray as its gray escarpments, abrupt and uncompromising--a fortress armed _cap-à-pie_, impregnable to assault from three sides. At its back rises the mountainous ridge punctuated by the “Tverna rock”--as it is designated--which quickly broadens into an upland, miles and miles wide, dense with forest that, after a fashion, shelters the vast sweep of the rearward walls. Basil had already been gone two weeks, and little by little Laurence’s exasperation had been growing to unbearable proportions, when one afternoon, as she, according to her custom, was trailing her fur-bordered velvets up and down the first floor, Garrassime presented himself before her--hands crossed upon breast, and head bowed, as is the rule of inferiors toward their masters there. “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.