His exultance was so great at the undreamed-of benison that he felt a howl of wolfish triumph straightening his throat. So he had won her away from Harry Chalender! How? What did it matter? He cried, “God knows how gladly!” He stopped a passing hackney coach and took her home. She was afraid at first to get out of the cab, for she explained that her father was stricken with the cholera, and her brother had died in the house that afternoon. He reassured her as best he could, and gave her servants orders to pack her things, and make her ready for such a wedding as he might improvise in a city whose ministers were worn out in body and soul with funeral ceremonies. In mad haste he had somehow accomplished the countless details that made her his in the eyes of State and Church. It was not till long after that she had grown calm enough to repent her frenzy of fear, and the irreparable calamity of a marriage at such speed. She had been reared to look forward to her wedding day as the high festival of her life, and had devoted numberless hours to visions of herself in her vast, creamy satin bridal robe from Whittingham’s, with a headdress like a veiled tower set upon a coiffure molded by Martell’s own deft fingers, a pair of Lane’s tightest satin boots, and gloves six buttons high. She had insisted that she should receive the newest novelty, a bridal bouquet, and that the wedding cake should be as big as a cathedral. And now she was married and all, and never a sign of splendor, only an old veil and a wreath of artificial orange blossoms; only the ring that the groom had all but forgotten to bring. Still, she was alive, and that was something; that was everything; that was far more than could be said of many a pretty friend of hers who had been blooming toward wifehood a week ago, and was now a blighted thing in a box from a coffin warehouse. As RoBards stared down at her when he could risk a glance away from the rough road, she seemed to be almost waxen with death. Her cheeks were so pale, her breathing so gentle, that she might be drifting from him even now. The little distance between sleep and death gave her an especial dearness, and he hated himself for the meanness of remembering his question after the preacher had gone and the few friends had dispersed: “How does it happen that you didn’t ask Harry Chalender to your wedding?” He had asked it teasingly, in a spirit of mischievous bravado. But she had groaned: “Harry? Harry is dying! Didn’t you know it? The old slave-woman at his house told our black man.” This had cast ashes upon the fire of his rejoicing. But the flames leaped through them again. For he had won. She was his, and it would be impious to complain that his enemy had been stricken. He felt a sudden dread of his bride. Could she be so heartless, so selfish—ah, well, women were weak things and men must be strong for them.