There had been no word of intercourse between the parties, and the youth now surveyed them with looks of curious inquiry, for the first time.

The invalid, as we have said, was apparently struggling with the last stages of natural decay.
Her companion was evidently youthful, in spite of those marks which even the unstudied eye might have discerned in her features, of a temper and a spirit subdued and put to rest by the world's strife and trial, and by afflictions which are not often found to crowd and to make up the history and being of the young.

Their position was peculiarly insulated, and Ralph wondered much at the singularity of a scene to which his own experience could furnish no parallel.

Here were two lone women--living on the borders of a savage nation, and forming the frontier of a class of whites little less savage, without any protection, and, to his mind, without any motive for making such their abiding-place.

His wonder might possibly have taken the shape of inquiry, but that there was something of oppressive reserve and shrinking timidity in the air of the young woman, who alone could have replied to his inquiries.