Many refugees leave Santiago during, and directly after, the naval battle of Santiago; among these are very many wealthy women who are forced to leave their splendid homes and flee, in silken garments, with the riff-raff of the city.
Some among these wealthy women sought to help in temporary hospitals, and one of them, at least, came to that which Ruth Wakefield had endowed; this woman was noticeable in many ways, being of superior intelligence as well as birth and breeding; she, soon, became proficient as a nurse, and when Ruth sees her standing close beside Estrella in the hospital, she suddenly recognizes a subtle resemblance between the two young women and calls their attention to the fact. And, so, it develops that Estrella finds her own blood-kin ... her own loving sister ... there in that shadowy hospital, for it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt by a little trinket that the girl has always worn about her neck ... a little cross of golden memories, through which, and through the girl herself, her lineage is traced, so that she remains with her own kin, and does not return to the little village where she suffered so much sorrow.
Tessa, with the stolidity of the Cuban peasant, seems to entirely recover both from her wounded leg and her wounded heart, for she marries a sturdy workman who supplies the earthly wants of Tessa and her numerous progeny. If she ever remembers the romantic days through which she has passed, her appearance belies the fact, for she becomes, apparently, contented with her lot in life.
AN AMERICAN
CHAPTER I
About the beginning of the year eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, there had been aroused in the hearts of the people of the United States a strong feeling of pity and compassion toward the inhabitants of the Island of Cuba who were under the ironshod heel of Spain and who had made many appeals for help to our own government in one way and in another.
The time was ripe for a revolution among the dark-skinned populace of the large cities of the Island Empire and many confusing circumstances combined to add to the confusion of sentiments entertained toward the government by those who suffered from its rulings.
Many indignities had been heaped upon the Cubans by those who claimed to represent the young King Alfonso XIII, who, in his far-away palace in old Madrid was as unconscious of what was done in his name, very many times, as he would have disapproved of it had he known it.