And return he must. He was wanted in America. The--the affairs of his bank required his presence. His old partner, by this time, was probably wild with irritation and amazement at his prolonged absence; and there would be heaps of letters awaiting him at Seville; a _crescendo_ of increasing urgency, ending with daily telegrams. Then there was the sale of the railway. If successful, it meant an assured fortune, to him and his heirs, if he had any. And an assured fortune is like a license, a ticket-of-leave to mould your future as you will. Vane spent much time in endeavoring to make this motive sufficient unto himself. He took steamer at Valencia and sailed out, westward, between the Pillars of Hercules. After all, this was more than Ulysses had ever dared do, and Ulysses was a hero of epic. Moreover, like any Irish emigrant, Ulysses had believed in the blessed Western isles. But then Ulysses had been in search of a home; he, Vane, was only in search of a fortune. The steamer touched at Cadiz for several days; and there Vane went ashore and ran up to Seville, by rail, to get his letters. There was no other letter from Miss Thomas. Then he went to Granada, and wandered for an evening through the Alhambra. He had got his New York papers at Seville, and he spent half an hour or more looking over the stock quotations, on a hill near the Generalife. Stocks seemed to be higher than ever; he had made still more money. While he was doing this he heard the tinkling of a zither or guitar, and, looking down, he saw that the sound proceeded from the courtyard of what was, apparently, a little inn or venta. The broad Vega lay smiling beneath him, stretching green and fertile to the last low hill from which the banished Moor had looked back upon Granada; while around him, in every street and alley, was the tinkle of the waters, still rushing from their source in the snows through the Moor's aqueducts, which kept his memory green with the verdure of the one green spot in Spain. Far above, to the left of Vane as he sat, were the pale snows of the Sierra Nevada, amber or ashen in the brown air of evening. The short work of the Spanish day was over; the strumming of guitars was multiplied in the stillness; and, looking down again, Vane even saw a girl dancing in the little inn yard. There was no other spectator but a swarthy man in black--her lover, probably--with a gray hat, and a black scarf about his waist. He was playing on the zither, and the girl began to sing some strange Spanish air with long, chromatic cadences, and a wild, unusual rhythm. They did not know that he was looking on; and the girl went on with her dance, which no one else seemed to notice but the lover, who struck his hands together, now and then, in applause or to mark the rhythm. Vane watched with interest. It was curious to think that she was really dancing, dancing and singing, and neither of them was paid for it. Vane landed in New York about the first of September. XIX.