Nancy first and last

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"And she brought me with her. Why did she conceal the fact that I was not her own child?"

"Because she meant to adopt you legally in place of the child she had lost, to give you a legal right to the name she bore. She always meant to do that, but, like many, many others, she deferred it from time to time. She had a feeling that if it were known by her husband's family you might not be treated with proper deference, and she was jealous for you. She hoped to live to see you well married, then the name would have made little difference. It was a wrong view which she took, but it came more from a natural disinclination to trouble herself about business than from any desire to harm you. I was able to persuade her to make a will in which she left you all that was her own."

Nancy was silent before she asked: "Would I have had more if I had been legally adopted?"

"Possibly; but we need not go into that now. The will was made long ago."

"Poor, dear mamma," sighed Nancy. "At first, Mr. Weed, I felt very bitterly toward her, as if she had done me a great wrong. I was very wicked to feel so, for I know she thought she was doing her best, and I have come to see that my feeling should be one of deep gratitude rather than of bitterness. She did so much for me, me, a poor little waif but it is a shock to know that my name is Anita Beltrán and not Nancy Loomis, to know little of my father and nothing of my own mother. Do you know anything more about me than is contained in those letters?"

"Nothing. I know only that you were deserted by your own mother; that your father, in political difficulties, was obliged to leave Mexico, that he went first to Cuba and then to New Orleans, where he died of fever; that Mrs. Loomis took you, at the time of your father's flight, brought you back with her from Mexico and reared you as her own."

"And her own child?"

"Was born in Mexico, lived but a short time and died there. Mr. Loomis died while they were on their way home, and she came here a widow with one child whom all believed to be her own. I think I was the only person who was informed of the truth, and this because of necessity rather than choice. Mrs. Loomis was still rather a young woman, and it seemed possible that she might live for many years. I was not aware that she had serious heart trouble till I learned so from Dr. Plummer after her death."

"I never knew it, either. I knew she was not very strong, but that there could be anything serious the matter never occurred to me. If I had known"—she gave a little sob—"it might have been different. I would have been more careful of her, more attentive."

"Ah, my dear, do not reproach yourself. You did not know and therefore acted according to your lack of knowledge. I can appreciate your feeling, for it has been my own in this case."