At this ungracious speech the figure slightly started but did not obey. Acashee laughed bitterly.
“You do not like skake (snake); you will be called Wa-ain (white soul), and be a great medicine-woman; but you are no more than a skake at the best. Get up, I say; the warriors are coming!”
Still there was neither movement nor reply, and the woman continued, in a sharper tone:
“Hope Vines, I bid thee come and eat!”
The figure slowly lifted itself up, and looked wistfully, and yet half defiantly, at the speaker.
“Acashee, I will answer only to my own name.”
“As you like. Skake is as good as Acashee. But the spider snares even the snake.”
To this truism Hope replied only by a low moan, and settled herself upon her elbow, amid the masses of luxurious skins woven with wampum, and fringed with purple and pearl-white shells.
To a stranger, Hope might have seemed but a mere child, and yet the mouth showed that a woman’s thoughts and passions had been there and the eye was a well of deep, fathomless emotions, while the grasp of the little hand showed that no child’s fiber restricted its power. The arched foot bespoke the elasticity of the tiger, while the small waist and womanly bust told of a thousand latent charms of character which time had failed to destroy.
Rising from her recumbent posture, she approached the water at the entrance to the cave, till the spray dashed itself upon her long, white locks, and the stronger light falling upon her brow revealed the sharp, beautiful outline of her face, scarcely touched by the lapse of time, and those weird, foreshadowing, Raleigh eyes, kindling in intensity, blue in the light, and nearly black when burning with emotion.