"None; none but my own."
"Then, tell me if you like."
Was it the faint tremor in her voice that emboldened him to speak?
"Unworthy of _you_!" was his answer.
"Of me?" she said, her face averted from his.
"Of you, and you only. But why should I withhold further confidence?
You have given me courage to speak; have I also your leave?"
She made no answer to the last question, but her look was eloquent of
assent.
"I thought on that day," he continued, "that I was accursed by man and
heaven--that I, an Indian savage, was not accounted worthy to indulge in
thoughts of love that had sprung up within my heart, like a pure flower,
only to be blighted by the prejudices of race; that all my adoration for
the fair and excellent, must be kept down by the accident of birth; and
that whilst nurturing a holy passion, I must crush it out and stifle it
for ever."
"But now?" Her voice was low and tremulous.
"Now--all rests upon one word. Upon that word depends my happiness or
misery now and for ever."
"And what is it?"
"Do not ask it from me. It must come from your eyes--from your lips--
from your heart!"
There was an eloquence that spoke the answer without a word being
uttered.
It was the eloquence of love!
In another instant the lips of the white maiden touched those of her
Indian lover.
From their rapturous embrace they were startled by a sound. It was a
groan!
It came from the other side of Sansuta's grave, behind which there was a
clump of bushes.
Wacora rushed towards the spot, while Alice kept her place, transfixed
to it by a terrible presentiment.
The young chief uttered an exclamation of horror, as he looked in among
the bushes.
His cousin was lying beneath them, stretched out--dead! a dagger, which
his right hand still clutched, sheathed in his heart!
With his last groan, and his heart's blood, the generous youth had
yielded up his love with his life.
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