"This fellow, Juan Manuel Nunez makes a regular fortune and marries a
native and has two daughters: Augusta and Margarita. Augusta, the
younger, marries my father, Ricardo Hasting, who was a madcap and ran
away from his home; Margarita weds a soldier, colonel Buenavida. They
all come to Spain with plenty of money; my father plunges into
disastrous business schemes, and after he has been utterly ruined he
learns, I don't know how, that the fortune of the priest Nunez de
Latona is at the disposition of the heirs. He goes to England, enters
his claim; they demand his documents, he brings forth the baptismal
records of his wife's ancestors and it is found that the priest Don
Fermin's birth registration is missing. Soon my father gives up
writing and years and years go by; at the end of more than ten we
receive a letter telling us that he has died in Australia.
"Margarita, my mother's sister, is left a widow with a daughter,
marries a second time, and her husband turns out a rascal of the worst
brand who leaves her without a centimo. Rosa, the daughter of the
first marriage, unable to put up with her step-father, elopes with an
actor and nothing more is heard of her.
"If," added Roberto, "you have followed my explanations, you will have
seen that the only remaining relatives of Don Fermin Nunez de Latona
are my sisters and I, because Margarita's daughter Rosa Nunez has
died.
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