At last her voice broke forth.
“You have struck Tahmeroo, and for her.”
“Tahmeroo—woman—squaw—how dare you touch this girl!” said Butler.
Something more than anger spoke in that voice—it had the dull hollow sound of desolation.
“Squaw—traitoress—half-breed!—go back to your wigwam before I lay you dead at the girl’s feet!”
The Indian girl withered under this fiendish speech; she fell forward, grovelling, with her face to the earth, and lay there like a drift of autumn leaves, through which the wind is moaning. Her lamentations broke forth in the Indian tongue, but the tones were enough to win tears from marble.
Mary Derwent knelt down and took the drooping head upon her lap; the anguish in that face as it was turned to the moonlight went to her gentle soul.
“Oh, me! you have killed her; cruel, cruel man!” she said, lifting her eyes to the lowering face of Butler, who was striving to reassure Jane Derwent, passing by the sufferings of his wife with reckless scorn. “She cannot speak; every breath is a moan.”
“Let her rest, then; no one wants her to speak, the young tigress! My poor Jane, the dagger was quivering over you when I came up. I shudder to think what might have happened but for your cries; had I been a little farther off, your cries could not have reached me, and I should have lost you eternally. Look up, dear one, now that I have saved your life it is mine, all mine.”