A few minutes later, the two men were at the door of Arithelli's
lodgings. The landlady met them on the stairs, hag-like in the
disarray of the early morning, and evidently terrified out of such
humanity as she possessed by the fear of infection. She had gone up
with the early morning coffee and found Arithelli raving aloud and
tearing at her throat. Her first thought had been to turn the girl out
of doors, or, as she was obviously incapable of moving, to send for a
priest and a nursing sister, and have her taken to the public hospital.
A wholesome fear of Emile prevented her from giving utterance to these
charitable impulses.
She invoked every saint in the calendar, whose name she could remember,
and crossed herself with automaton-like energy.
She could not, she protested, be expected to nurse such a dangerous
case of fever as this undoubtedly was. There was her son, the adored
of her old age. _Santa Maria_! If he also were stricken!
Emile pushed her on one side. "I'll talk to you presently," he said in
her own dialect. "If you are going into hysterics with fright you'll
catch anything that is catching.
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