And with that exquisite tact, innate in the female heart, she sat down by the side of the sufferer, laid her beautiful head on her knees, loosened her vest, and gave her that busy attention of which the other sex alone possess the secret.
The two maidens, thus grouped on the uneven floor of a wretched Indian hut, offered an exquisite picture. Both deliciously lovely, though of different beauty—for Ellen had the most lovely golden locks ever seen, while the Gazelle, on the contrary, had the warm tint of the Spanish woman, and hair of a bluish black—presented the complete type, in two different races, of the beau-ideal of woman, that misunderstood and incomprehensible being, the fallen angel in whose heart God seems to have let fall a glorious beam of His divinity, and who retains a vague reminiscence of that Eden which she made us lose.
The American woman, that perfect whole, a composition of graces, volcanic and raging passions, angel and demon, who loves and hates simultaneously, and who makes the man she prefers feel in the same second the joys of paradise and the nameless tortures of the Inferno! Who could even analyze this impossible nature, in which virtue and vices, strangely amalgamated, seem to personify the terrible convulsions of the soil on which she lives, and which has created her?
For a long time, Ellen's cares were thrown away. White Gazelle remained pale and cold in her arms. The maiden began to grow alarmed. She knew not to what she should have recourse, when the stranger made a slight movement, and a faint ruddiness tinged her cheeks. She uttered a profound sigh, and her eyelids painfully rose. She looked round her in amazement, and then closed her eyes again.
After a moment, she opened them once more, raised her hand to her brow as if to dissipate the clouds that obscured her mind, fixed her eyes on the person who was attending to her, and then, with a frown and quivering lips, she, tore herself from the arms that entwined her, and, bounding like a panther, sought shelter in one of the corners of the hut, without ceasing to gaze fixedly at the young American, who was startled at this strange conduct, and could not understand it.
The two girls remained thus for a few seconds, face to face, devouring each other with their eyes, but not exchanging a syllable. No other sound could be heard in the hut, save the panting respiration of the two females.
"Why do you shun me?" Ellen at length asked in her harmonious voice, soft as the cooing of a dove. "Do I frighten you?" she added, with a smile.
The Spaniard listened to her as if she did not catch her meaning, and shook her head so passionately that she broke the ribbon confining her hair, which fell in thick ringlets over her white shoulders, and veiled them.
"Who are you?" she asked, impetuously, with an accent of menace and anger.
"Who am I?" Ellen replied, in a firm voice, in which a slight tinge of reproach was perceptible. "I am the woman who has just saved your life."