“And you are happy?”
“Yes, as happy as those can be who are left alone on earth.”
“What! are there none of your family now living?”
“No, no!” she replied, bitterly; “the blood of Powhatan now runs in this narrow channel,” and she held out her graceful arms, as she spoke, with an expressive gesture.
“Alas! I pity you,” said Bernard, sighing. “We are alike in this—for my blood is reduced to as narrow a channel as your own. But your family was very numerous?”
“Yes, numerous as those stars—and bright and beautiful as they.”
“Judging from the only Pleiad that remains,” thought Bernard, “you may well say so—and can you,” he added, aloud, “forgive those who have thus injured you?”
“Forgive, oh yes, or how shall I be forgiven! Look at those stars! They shine the glory of the night. They vanish before the sun of the morning. So faded my people before the arms of the white man—and yet I can freely forgive them all!”
“What, even those who have quenched those stars!” said Bernard, with a sinister meaning in his tone.
“You mistake,” replied Mamalis, touchingly. “They are not quenched. The stars we see to-night, though unseen on the morrow, are still in heaven.”