She had somehow never learned to call him by his first name, before they were married. And by some stranger mystery of shyness, after they were married, she dared the “David” only on occasions of peculiar emotion. Even after she bore him children, she called him “Mister RoBards.” She had laughed away his alarm, though her merriment was sickly. And then her uncle had gone with the other members of the Board of Health to inspect the quarantine station established at Staten Island against the infected foreigners, swarming overseas in sailing vessels like vast unclean buzzards; and in two weeks every member of that board was dead save one; and he was not her uncle. This had ended her laughter in terror. She had denounced the authorities for the ignominy of her uncle’s fate. Wealthy as he had been, his body was carried out to the old Potter’s Field in Washington Square, and buried in that notorious spot hitherto devoted to the paupers, the criminals, and the overripe fruit of the gallows tree. Then one day a nameless corpse was found in Park Place, before her very door; a cousin of hers that she loved was called to the inquest; and nine of the twenty on the coroner’s board were dead in a few days, and her cousin was one of them. Patty was ready then to flee anywhere; but she could not persuade Harry Chalender to escape, and she vowed that she would not go without him. RoBards felt a cholera of jealousy burning his very vitals as he realized that his wife had seemed more afraid of leaving Harry Chalender than of the plague. But Harry Chalender scorned to fly and RoBards would not leave town while Patty was there, even though she refused his love. He had just resigned himself to a life without her, and was hoping that the pestilence would end his suffering, when she came to him. Only yesterday afternoon it was! And she came running along the street to his house—defying all the gossips in a greater fear! He was living just below City Hall Park, on the east side of Broadway, in a once fashionable home that had become a fashionable boarding house. He happened to be standing at his window brooding when the sight of a woman running caught his eye. He was astounded to see that it was Patty Jessamine. Everybody was, for everybody knew her beauty. RoBards was down the stairs and at the front door just as she crossed Broadway, dodging among the tangled traffic. She paused to lean against the pump that stood at the corner there, not heeding that her tiny shoes and the ribbons about her ankles were bedabbled with the mire, for she cowered from a staggering, groping wretch who seemed to turn black as he reeled, clutched at her wide skirts, and sprawled in the last gripe of cholera. She had to step across him to escape and RoBards ran to catch her as she swooned. Her scream of dismay ended in a stuttering whisper: “Marry me, Mr. RoBards! and take me away before I die.”