"And very beautiful too," she sobbed. "And Norman, poor fellow, was quite mad about her—for all she was an Indian girl—though her father was white and a Spaniard, I will say that for her. Not even so dark as you are, Diane, and shy and lovely enough to turn any man's head—much less your father's—though your grandfather stormed and threatened to kill them both and only for Grant he would have. And when an Indian from the Everglades told Norman that—that she really hadn't been married before but just a—mother like Carl's mother, my dear—"
But Diane was gone, stumbling headlong from the tent. Aunt Agatha was to remember her white agonized face for many a day.
CHAPTER XLVI
IN THE FOREST
With the darkening of the night a wind sprang up over the bleak, black expanse of lake and swept with a sigh through the forest on the shore. It was a wind from the east which drove a film of cloud across the stars and bore a hint of rain in its freshness. The rain itself pattering presently through the forest fell upon the huddled figure of a girl who lay face downward upon the ground among the trees.
She lay inert, her head pillowed upon her arm, face to face with the unspeakable shadow that had haunted Carl. Not married. Aunt Agatha had said, but just a mother! Now the pitiful fragments of a hallowed shrine lay mockingly at her feet. How scornfully she had flashed at Carl!
Diane quivered and lay very still, torn by the bitter irony of it.
And the Indian mother! Carl had known and Ronador. She had caught a startled look in the eyes of each at the Sherrill fête. Every wild instinct, if she had but heeded the warning, had pointed the way; the childhood escapade in the forest, the tomboy pranks of riding and running and swimming that had horrified Aunt Agatha to the point of tears, and later the persistent call of the open country.
What wonder if the soft, musical tongue of the Seminole had come lightly to her lips? What wonder if Indian instincts had driven her forth to the wild? What wonder if the nameless stir of atavism beneath a Seminole wigwam had frightened her into flight. Indian instincts, Indian grace, Indian stoicism and courage, Indian keenness and hearing—all of these had come to her from the Indian mother with the blood of white men in her veins.