He groaned aloud, and his fingers dug into the flesh of his knees as he thought of that.  Could he keep that terrible truth from her?  If she went with him into the North, would she not guess?  And, even though he kept the truth from her until Mortimer FitzHugh was dead, would he be playing fair with her?  Again he went over all that he had gone over before.  He knew that Joanne would leave him to-morrow, and probably forever, if he told her that FitzHugh was alive.  The law could not help him, for only death—­and never divorce—­would free her.  Within himself he decided for the last time.  He was about to do the one thing left for him to do.  And it was the honourable thing, for it meant freedom for her and happiness for them both.  To him, Donald MacDonald had become a man who lived very close to the heart and the right of things, and Donald had said that he should take her.  This was the greatest proof that he was right.

But could he keep Joanne from guessing?  Could he keep her from discovering the truth until it was time for her to know that truth?  In this necessity of keeping her from suspecting that something was wrong he saw his greatest fight.  Compared with it, the final settlement with Quade and Mortimer FitzHugh sank into a second importance.  He knew what would happen then.  But Joanne—­Joanne on the trail, as his wife——­

He began pacing back and forth in his room, clouding himself in the smoke of his pipe.  Frequently Joanne’s mind had filled him with an exquisite delight by its quickness and at times almost magic perceptiveness, and he realized that in these things, and the fineness of her woman’s intuition, now lay his greatest menace.  He was sure that she understood the meaning of the assault upon her that night, though she had apparently believed what he and Blackton had told them—­that it had been the attack of irresponsible and drunken hoodlums.  Yet he was certain that she had already guessed that Quade had been responsible.

He went to bed, dreading what questions and new developments the morning might bring forth.  And when the morning came, he was both amazed and delighted.  The near tragedy of the previous night might never have happened in so far as he could judge from Joanne’s appearance.  When she came out of her room to meet him, in the glow of a hall lamp, her eyes were like stars, and the colour in her cheeks was like that of a rose fresh from its slumber in dew.

“I’m so happy, and what happened last night seems so like a bad dream,” she whispered, as he held her close to him for a few moments before descending the stairs.  “I shall worry about Peggy, John.  I shall.  I don’t understand how her husband dares to bring her among savages like these.  You wouldn’t leave me among them, would you?” And as she asked the question, and his lips pressed hers, John Aldous still believed that in her heart she knew the truth of that night attack.