"You needn't laugh," returned Carlita, allowing him to draw her very closely in the shelter of his arms. "It was serious enough, Heaven knows! It was the curse of Pocahontas. Jessica told you once that I was half Indian. While the component parts weren't exactly correct, the essence of the statement was true. There is the blood of the Indian girl in my veins through the maternal side."
"And a very noble girl she was," exclaimed Leith. "I'm sure John Smith the first would bear me out if he were here to speak for himself."
"Her marriage to John Rolfe, you know, was most unhappy. The only issue of the marriage was a son, but on her death bed, Pocahontas pronounced a curse upon his female descendants who should bear the trace of the Indian in her appearance."
"How very thoughtless of her. When it was John Rolfe who made her so unhappy, why couldn't she have made it the male descendants?"
"History sayeth not," returned Carlita, her humor lightened in spite of herself. "But it is a matter of fact that every dark member of my mother's family has suffered through that curse."
"But I have not heard what it was yet?"
"And I can't tell you the words; but the meaning was that if she dared love she should suffer ruin and death, either she or the man whom she cursed with her devotion. I told that curse to—Olney, Leith, when he was leaving for Mexico."
"And you really believe that is what caused your suffering and his death?"
She did not reply, but looked out dreamily over the water.