"Ngapuhi," said she confidently. "Rotorua natives, some of them, going to the coast with sick man."
"Who is the girl walking by the litter?" asked Hypatia, with quickened interest. "She is taller than the other women."
"Most like Erena Mannering. Not sure; but walk like her. Half-caste she is, daughter of war-chief. Pakeha rangatira, belong to tribe all the same."
"Now, I wonder if this can be Lieutenant Massinger?" said Summers. "He has not been seen since the Gate Pah affair. This Erena Mannering was reported to have carried him off, when he fell fighting bravely beside Von Tempsky. His place of refuge may have become insecure; for that or other reasons they may wish to reach the coast."
Hypatia made no reply, but, walking quickly with her companion, reached the bearers of the invalid, as the girl, signing to them to halt, accosted Mr. Summers.
"You are the missionary of Oropi?" said she, in perfectly good English, spoken with a purity of intonation not always remarked in the colonists of presumably higher education. "We are bringing a Forest Ranger who was badly wounded at the Gate Pah to the coast. Will you kindly allow us to rest for a day? He is very low, and much fatigued by the journey."
As she spoke, Hypatia fixed her eyes, with feelings alternating between astonishment and admiration, upon this altogether amazing young person. Dressed, or rather draped, like the native women who formed part of the escort, without covering to head or feet, the simple attire rather heightened than disguised her beauty. Her free and haughty carriage, utterly unconscious as she seemed of her unconventional attire, the splendour of her glorious eyes, startled Hypatia, while her graceful pose as she turned to explain the situation reminded the English girl of the statue of Diana which she had seen in the Pitti palace at Rome.
As the two girls faced each other, with the half-inquiring, half-challenging regard of the partly conscious rivals of their sex, they would have formed a contrast, rarely met in such completeness, between the finished aristocrat of the old world and this wondrous embodiment of all the womanly graces, reared amid the lonely lakes and wildwood glades of a far land.
Alike in beauty, though one possessed the blue eyes, the abundant fair hair, the delicate rose-bloom of the mother isle; the other the ebon tresses, the flashing eyes, burning from time to time with a strange lustre;—alike their classic figures and graceful movement, each might have stood, had there been a painter in attendance, as the realization of the glories and graces of early womanhood.