Signing the Contract and What it Cost

“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.
“Your aunt is an invalid, I regret to say,” Mr. Tredick remarked as they drove rapidly through the streets, “and we must not come upon her too suddenly with this good news. I shall have to ask you, Miss Farnese, to take a seat in the parlor below while I seek a private interview with her in her boudoir.”

Our heroine bowed in acquiescence, and he went on:

“It will not take long to break the matter to her, and you are not likely to be kept waiting many minutes.”

“Please do not concern yourself about that,” she said; “I should prefer to be kept waiting for hours rather than run the slightest risk of injury to the only relative I am certain of possessing in all the world.”

The girl seemed composed – the lawyer thought her so, and rather wondered at such an amount of self-control in one so young – but inwardly she was full of agitation and excitement.

Her lonely heart yearned for the love and companionship of kindred, yet dreaded to find in this unknown relative one who might prove wholly uncongenial and even repulsive. She remembered that she was not yet of age, and was about to place herself under authority of which she knew nothing. There might be conflict of tastes and opinions on very vital subjects. Yet she had no thought of drawing back. She had weighed the matter carefully, viewed it in all its aspects, had decided that this was her wisest and best course, and was ready to pursue it unfalteringly to the end.

So wholly absorbed in these thoughts and emotions was she that she took no note of the direction in which they were moving, nor what streets they traversed.

The carriage stopped. Mr. Tredick threw open the door, sprang out, and, turning, assisted her to alight.

He led her up the steps of a large and handsome dwelling, and rang the bell. She glanced about her, and started with surprise. The street, the house, everything within range of her vision, had a strangely familiar look.

They had reached the suburbs of the city, and before them – as they stood on the threshold, looking out toward the east – lay the great lake, quiet as a sleeping child, under the fervid rays of the sun of that still summer day, one of the calmest and most sultry of the season. A second glance around, and Floy – as we must still call her – turned to her conductor with an eager question on her lips.

But the door opened, a smiling face appeared, and a cheery voice exclaimed:

“Is it you, Misther Tredick, sir? Will ye plaze to walk in, and I’ll run up an’ tell the Madame. She’s dressed and ready to resave ye, by good luck.

“An’ the lady too,” added Kathleen, catching a sight of Floy, but without recognizing her, her face being partially concealed by her veil.

“Step intil the parlor, both o’ yees, plaze, an’ who shall I say wishes to see the Madame?” she asked, with another and curious glance at the veiled lady.

“Mr. Tredick,” said that gentleman, giving her his card; “don’t mention the lady at all. She will wait here till I come down again. Just tell the Madame that Mr. Tredick wishes to see her a moment on business.”

But Mary’s voice spoke from the stairhead, “Katty, the Madame says ask the gentleman to walk right up,” and Mr. Tredick, hearing, awaited no second invitation.

Floy’s brain was in a whirl.

“The Madame? the Madame?” she repeated in low, agitated tones, dropping into a chair in the luxuriously-furnished parlor, but with no thought of its richly-carved, costly wood and velvet cushions. “My aunt must be visiting here. But ’twas for the Madame he asked, ’twas the Madame he wished to see! Can it be that she – she is – Yes, it must – it is!”

She hid her face in her hands, with a slight shudder and something between a groan and a sigh.

The poor Madame had never been an attractive person to Floy; she was not one whom she could greatly respect or look up to for comfort in sorrow, for guidance in times of doubt and perplexity.

In finding her she had not found one who would at all fill the place of the parents she mourned, and whose loss had left her without an earthly counsellor, an earthly prop.

In the bitterness of her disappointment she learned how much she had been half unconsciously hoping for. The pressure of poverty had been sorely felt by the young girl during these past months, but was as nothing to the yearning for the tender love and care and happy trustfulness that had been the crowning blessing of earlier days.

CHAPTER XXX

PANSY

“A hundred thousand welcomes: I could weep,
And I could laugh; I am light and heavy: welcome!”

    Shakespeare.
Madame Le Conte received her legal adviser that morning in her boudoir, rising from her easy chair in her eager haste to learn if he were the bearer of tidings, and coming forward to meet him as he entered.

“What news, Mr. Tredick? I see in your face that you have some for me!” she cried, almost breathless with excitement and the exertion, slight as it was.

“Ah! are you so skilled in reading faces?” he returned playfully. “Well, I own that I have a bit of news for you – good news as far as it goes. But let me beg you to be seated and calm yourself before I proceed further.”

“Oh, go on, go on! don’t keep me in suspense!” she cried in increasing agitation, sinking into her chair again and pointing him to a seat as she spoke.