Her heart gave a wild throb, and in her excitement the paper slipped from her fingers and fell to the floor. She stooped and clutched it hastily, eagerly, as if she feared it would even yet escape her; then, with a strong effort at composure, opened out the folds with her trembling fingers. One glance told her that it was in very truth the long-sought deed of gift. She did not wait to read it in detail, but scanned the lines hurriedly. The name--her mother’s name and her own--was what she sought; and there it was--“Ethel Farnese”--perfectly legible, though evidently written with unsteady fingers, as of one in great agitation of mind. “Ethel Farnese!” repeated Floy half aloud, letting the paper fall into her lap and clasping her hands together over it, while with a far-off look in her lustrous eyes she gazed into space. “Ethel Farnese! and that is who I am; who she was when she gave me to them! Ethel Farnese! I seem to be not myself at all, but somebody else. How strange it all is! just like a story or a dream.” And for a moment she sat with her head upon her hand, overcome by a curious sense of loss and bewilderment. Was she the same girl who had come into that room ten minutes ago? Then a thought struck her. “The will! might it not have shared the hiding-place of the deed? Oh, what joy if she could but find _that_!” She caught up the pocket-book again, the color coming and going in her cheeks, her heart beating so fast she could hardly breathe, and with remorseless fingers tore it apart till not a fold or crevice remained unexplored; but alas! without any further discovery. “Ah, he never made it!” she sighed sadly to herself, as she had done months before. She restored the pocket-book to its place, with the deed of gift safely bestowed inside, locked her trunk, and with the gold piece in her hand returned to the work-room. Annie, pacing to and fro with agitated steps, was still its only occupant. “Oh, I thought you’d never come!” she cried, stopping in her walk and turning eagerly to Floy. “Have you got the money for me? What’s the matter? you look as if something had happened.” “I have the money--a five-dollar gold piece which I value so highly as a keepsake that I would not spend it for myself unless I were in absolute danger of starvation,” Floy said, answering the first query, ignoring the other; “still I will lend it to you if necessary to save you from arrest. But, Annie, wouldn’t your paying the money to Mrs. Sharp look like an acknowledgment that you had really kept it back, as she says?” “I don’t know; maybe it would,” sobbed Annie, “but she’ll send me to jail if I don’t. I don’t like to take your keepsake either; but oh dear, oh dear! what shall I do?”