Katonah, reclining against the tree and gazing upward at the Frenchman, formed a deep-toned picture becoming to that land of hazy sunlight, drowzy zephyrs, and opening flowers, bright-hued and redolent of spring. Her dark eyes, clear-cut features, and white, even teeth, her slender, supple limbs, satisfied even the exacting eye of a man who had looked with admiration upon La Vallière, de Montespan, de Maintenon.
“The land across the sea!” exclaimed Katonah, waving a slender, well-turned hand toward the opposite shore of the great river. “You would go back to it?” She had learned the French tongue from her brother, Chatémuc.
Her eloquent eyes rested questioningly upon the pallid, symmetrical face of de Sancerre.
The barbaric directness of her question brought a smile to the Frenchman’s lips as he threw himself down by her side and took her hand in his.
“Mayhap some day I shall go back, ma petite. But at this moment I have no wish to go.”
De Sancerre was looking at Katonah, but in his mind was the picture of a scrap of white bark upon which had been scrawled the name of the only woman his heart had ever loved. Perhaps Katonah weighed his words at their real worth, for she withdrew her hand from his, while her gentle eyes rested mournfully upon the mighty river upon whose bosom she had learned the joy and sorrow of a hopeless love.
De Sancerre, whose delicately-moulded face, graceful figure, ready wit, and quick perceptions, added to high birth and a reputation for physical courage, had made him a favorite at a voluptuous court, felt a mixture of self-satisfaction and annoyance at the unsought homage that he had won from this handsome savage. No coquette at Versailles could have put into artful words the flattery that Katonah gave him by a glance. But de Sancerre realized that, under existing circumstances, her devotion to him might involve them both in serious peril. Her brother, Chatémuc, was a sentry whose eyes and ears would not always be blind and deaf to what was stirring besides the river and the leaves.
“Katonah,” said the Count, presently, “let me tell you why I may never go back to the land beyond the sea.”
The Indian girl gazed up at him with earnest attention.
“To the great wigwam of the king who rules all kings there came a maiden from a distant land. Her eyes were like the night, her hair the color of a raven’s wing.”