In the dim light she knew him at once, and she cried out: "My Thomas! My Thomas! My dear son! For three years I have not seen you." He brought into the room with him an atmosphere of comfort and strength.
Suddenly all fear and anxiety was lifted, and in Antonia's heart the reaction was so great that she sank into a chair and began to cry like a child.

Her brother held her in his arms and soothed her with the promise of his presence and help.

Then he said, cheerfully: "Let me have some supper, Antonia.

I am as hungry as a lobos wolf; and run away, Isabel, and help your sister, for I declare to you girls I shall eat everything in the house." The homely duty was precisely what was needed to bring every one's feelings to their normal condition; and Thomas Worth sat chatting with his mother and Lopez of his father, and Jack, and Dare, and Luis, and the superficial events of the time, with that pleasant, matter-of-course manner which is by far the most effectual soother of troubled and unusual conditions.
In less than half an hour Antonia called her brother, and he and Lopez entered the dining-room together.

They came in as brothers might come, face answering face with sympathetic change and swiftness; but Antonia could not but notice the difference in the two men.