I might easily have become satisfied. A word, a simple question, would have procured me the knowledge I longed for; and yet I dared not say that word. I preferred passing long hours—a whole day—upon the rack of uncertainty and suspicion.
Thus, then, was I prepared for the painful conjectures that sprang into my thoughts on beholding that mirrored form.
The pain was of short duration; almost instantaneous was the relief. A shadowy figure was seen gliding around the edge of the pond; it emerged into the open moonlight, not six paces from where I stood. I had a full and distinct view of it. It was a woman—an Indian woman. It was not Maümee.
Chapter Thirty Three.
Haj-Ewa.
I saw before me a woman of middle age—somewhere between thirty and forty—a large woman, who once possessed beauty—beauty that had been abused. She was the wreck of a grand loveliness, whose outlines could not be effaced—like the statue of some Grecian goddess, broken by Vandal hands, but whose very fragments are things of priceless value.
Not that her charms had departed. There are men who affect to admire this ripe maturity; to them, she would have been a thing of peerless splendour. Time had made no inroad upon those large rounded arms, none upon the elliptical outlines of that noble bust. I could judge of this—for it was before my eyes, in the bright moonlight, nude, from neck to waist, as in the hour of infancy. Alone the black hair, hanging in wild dishevelment over the shoulders, formed a partial shrouding. Nor had time laid a finger upon this: amidst all that profusion of rich raven clusters, not a strand of silver could be detected.
Time could not affect, nor had it, that fine facial outline. The moulding of the chin; the oval of those lips; the aquiline nose, with its delicate spirally curved nostril; the high, smooth front; the eye—the eye—what is it? why that unearthly flash? that wild unmeaning glance? Ha! that eye—Merciful heavens! the woman is mad!