Nancy first and last

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"Oh, daughter," her mother smiled half sadly, "how confident you are. Is it because you are so young or because you really have a prophetic instinct?"

"A little of each, perhaps," returned Anita gaily. "Have I not had experiences enough to warrant me in my faith? Think of my condition a year ago, motherless, homeless, poor, and now look at me: my own mother by my side and sufficient means to make a home with her when our voyagings are over. Dear, good old weedy Weed to manage so well that I should have enough, not great wealth, but enough. We can live comfortably on our little income in England, you said, and when we find Pepé we can go there."

"Ah, Pepé, Pepé," murmured her mother.

"I could almost hope," said Anita after a pause, "that we shall not find him in southern Spain, for I should love to see much of the country. Is it very far north that my father's people live?"

"The few remaining relatives live in the extreme north. You know there are none left nearer than cousins, and perhaps an aunt or uncle by marriage, yet it is in the north that we shall be most liable to find your brother, for we were told in New Orleans that the boy was sent in care of a friend to Spain, and what more likely than that he was sent to relatives?"

"You never found out the name of the friend?"

"No, you remember the little French woman, who told us, could not remember; it had been so long ago, she said."

"It was wonderful that we should have discovered her, wasn't it? and that it was in her house my father died? It is all wonderful, and that is why I cannot help feeling that nothing is too strange to expect. You said you had written, to the aunt, was it?"

"To the uncle, but he was no longer living and his widow who replied knew nothing of a Pepé Beltrán from America; that is why, Anita, I have so little hope, such a little lad; he may have died on the journey over."

There was no time to reply for the moment had come when they must disembark from the steamer, and they were soon on their way to the simple hotel to which they had been directed. It seemed as if Anita, once on Spanish soil, had acquired a light-heartedness and gaiety which had been foreign to her for many months. In Europe not only was she confident of finding her brother, but she had a lingering hope of encountering Terrence Wirt. She had satisfied herself that he had not returned home, and while she was still doubtful of his real devotion to her, she, nevertheless, wove many a dream on the way over as she lay back in her steamer chair, apparently asleep. If only she might know, in some mysterious way, of his real feeling for her, whether he had found some other to whom he could give that quality of affection which she had demanded. Perhaps he had already married. Perhaps he would return before she did and would marry one of the girls whom he had met in her neighborhood, Lulu Fauntleroy, or Alice Patterson. She would clench her hands when this thought came, feeling that she could not stand it, then she would suddenly fling aside her steamer rug, spring up and pace the deck. The despondent moments came when she realized that she might never return to America, when she remembered that she was no longer the Nancy Loomis who had attracted Terrence Wirt, a girl with prospects, with golden locks, with a right to be imperious and exacting. In place of the smooth golden locks there was the dark curly hair, for one thing; there was a new name for another, and there was no longer the right, except that of youth, to demand from the world all she had considered her just deserts. However, none of these thoughts troubled her as they were conducted to their hotel in Cadiz. Here were green fields and pastures new, and she was young.