“Ah!” cried Mr. Tredick, rubbing his hands and showing a fine set of false teeth, “I begin to see a little light. You deserve a great deal of credit for your exertions--the energy and wisdom with which they have been made, Miss Farnese.” “It was God’s good providence, sir, not any wisdom of mine,” she answered with quiet simplicity. “May I ask if you were brought up by the Kempers with the knowledge that you were their child only by adoption?” queried Mr. Server. “I had not the slightest suspicion of it till my--Mrs. Kemper revealed the fact to me with her dying breath,” Floy answered in a voice that trembled with almost overpowering emotion. “Pardon me,” he said, with a touch of compassion in his tones and a second glance at her mourning dress, “your loss has been recent, I fear?” She bowed a silent assent. “And you were ignorant of your true mother’s name?” pursued Mr. Tredick, modulating his voice to express sympathy in her sorrow; “had you not then this deed of gift in your possession?” Floy told of her vain search of last year, and her recent discovery. “Are you now satisfied of my identity?” she asked. “Perfectly; and it is your turn to question us. Do you not wish to learn who has been engaged in the same quest as yourself?” “I do indeed!” she replied with earnest animation. “Your mother had a sister,” he said. “The two were entirely alone in the world after the death of their parents, which occurred before your mother--the younger one--was quite grown up. In time both married. The husbands quarrelled, the sisters became estranged (each, it is to be presumed, taking part with her husband), and there was a separation. Your father carried his wife off to parts unknown, and the sister, my client, has heard nothing of her since, though for the last ten years, during which she has been a wealthy, childless widow, she has used every effort to find her. All this occurred before your birth, and she is still in ignorance of the fact that her sister ever became a mother.” Floy sat with her hands clasped in her lap, her large, lustrous eyes fixed intently upon the speaker, her breathing hurried, the full red lips slightly parted, a rich, varying color on her softly-rounded cheek. “She is very pretty,” thought Server, watching her furtively; “very like the descriptions I have heard of Mrs. Farnese.” Mr. Tredick paused, and the girl drew a long, sighing breath. “Where is my aunt? When may I see her?” she asked, vainly striving to be calm and composed. “She is in this city. I will send for a hack and take you to her at once, if you will allow me to do so.” CHAPTER XXIX. A THORNY ROSE. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, Roughhew them how we will.”--SHAKESPEARE.