What he had heard was one of Otto's pack-horses coming down to drink. He turned toward her again.
Joanne stood with her back still to the table. She had slipped a hand into the front of her dress and had drawn forth a long thick envelope. As she opened it, Aldous saw that it contained banknotes. From among these she picked out a bit of paper and offered it to him.
It was a newspaper clipping, worn and faded, with a date two years old. It had apparently been cut from an English paper, and told briefly of the tragic death of Mortimer FitzHugh, son of a prominent Devonshire family, who had lost his life while on a hunting trip in the British Columbia Wilds.
"He was my husband," said Joanne, as Aldous finished. "Until six months ago I had no reason to believe that the statement in the paper was not true. Then--an acquaintance came out here hunting. He returned with a strange story. He declared that he had seen Mr. FitzHugh alive. Now you know why I am here. I had not meant to tell you. It places me in a light which I do not think that I can explain away--just now. I have come to prove or disprove his death. If he is alive----"
For the first time she betrayed the struggle she was making against some powerful emotion which she was fighting to repress. Her face had paled. She stopped herself with a quick breath, as if knowing that she had already gone too far.
"I guess I understand," said Aldous. "For some reason your anxiety is not that you will find him dead, Ladygray, but that you may find him alive."
"Yes--yes, that is it. But you must not urge me farther. It is a terrible thing to say. You will think I am not a woman, but a fiend. And I am your guest. You have invited me to supper. And--the potatoes are ready, and there is no fire!"
She had forced a smile back to her lips. John Aldous whirled toward the door.
"I will have the partridges in two seconds!" he cried. "I dropped them when the horses went through the rapids."
The oppressive and crushing effect of Joanne's first mention of a husband was gone. He made no effort to explain or analyze the two sudden changes that swept over him. He accepted them as facts, and that was all. Where a few moments before there had been the leaden grip of something that seemed to be physically choking him, there was now again the strange buoyancy with which he had gone to the Otto tent. He began to whistle as he went to the river's edge. He was whistling when he returned, the two birds in his hand. Joanne was waiting for him in the door. Again her face was a faintly tinted vision of tranquil loveliness; her eyes were again like the wonderful blue pools over the sunlit mountains. She smiled as he came up. He was amazed--not that she had recovered so completely from the emotional excitement that had racked her, but because she betrayed in no way a sign of grief--of suspense or of anxiety. A few minutes ago he had heard her singing. He could almost believe that her lips might break into song again as she stood there.