e name is over that grave down there--Mortimer FitzHugh. It came about
strangely--what I am going to tell you now. You will wonder. You will think
I was insane. But remember, John Aldous--the world had come to hold but one
friend and comrade for me, and he was my father. It was after Mindano. He
caught the fever, and he was dying."

For the first time her breath choked her. It was only for an instant. She
recovered herself, and went on:

"Out of the world my father had left he had kept one friend--Richard
FitzHugh; and this man, with his son, was with us during those terrible
days of fever. I met Mortimer as I had met a thousand other men. His
father, I thought, was the soul of honour, and I accepted the son as such.
We were much together during those two weeks of my despair, and he seemed
to be attentive and kind. Then came the end. My father was dying. And I--I
was ready to die. In his last moments his one thought was of me. He knew I
was alone, and the fear of it terrified him. I believe he did not realize
then what he was asking of me. He pleaded with me to marry the son of his
old friend before he died. And I--John Aldous, I could not fight his last
wish as he lay dying before my eyes. We were married there at his bedside.
He joined our hands. And the words he whispered to me last of all were:
'Remember--Joanne--thy promise and thine honour!'"

For a moment Joanne stood facing the little lake, and when she spoke again
there was a note of thankfulness, of subdued joy and triumph, in her voice.

"Before that day had ended I had displeased Mortimer FitzHugh," she said,
and Aldous saw the fingers of her hands close tightly. "I told him that
until a month had passed I would not live with him as a wife lives with her
husband. And he was displeased. And my father was not yet buried! I was
shocked. My soul revolted.

"We went to London and I was made welcome in the older FitzHugh's wifeless
home, and the papers told of our wedding. And two days later there came
from Devonshire a woman--a sweet-faced little woman with sick, haunted
eyes; in her arms she brought a baby; and that baby _was Mortimer
FitzHugh's!_

"We confronted him--the mother, the baby, and I; and then I knew that he
was a fiend. And the father was a fiend. They offered to buy the woman off,
to support her and the child. They told me that many English gentlemen had
made mistakes like this, and that it was nothing--that it was quite common.
Mortimer FitzH