He got up. "Then I will waste your time no longer. You are always at work—I see and read and hear—always at work—good works—good works."
Her lips parted, but she was silent. Did he mean a reflection on the one work that had not been quite so good? But he was gone.
The advertisement was repeated in all the papers. England, Scotland, Ireland, the Colonies, knew about this adoption, and the anxiety of the mother to recover her son.
At this stage of the investigation, the subject began to be generally talked about. The newspapers had leading articles on the general subject of adoption. It was an opportunity for the display of classical scholarship; of mediæval scholarship; of historical scholarship; cases of pretence, of substitution, are not uncommon. There are noble houses about which things are whispered—things which must not be bruited abroad. The subject of adoption, open or concealed, proved fertile and fruitful to the leader-writer. One man, for instance, projected himself in imagination into the situation, and speculated on the effect which would be produced on a young man of culture and fine feeling, of finding out, at five and twenty, that he belonged to quite another family, with quite another set of traditions, prejudices, and ideas. Thus a young man born in the purple, or near it; brought up in great respect for birth, connections, and family history, with a strong prejudice in favour of an aristocratic caste; suddenly discovers that his people belong to the lowest grade of those who can call themselves of the middle class, and that he has no kind of connection with the folk to whom he has always believed himself attached. What would be the effect upon an educated and a sensitive mind? What would be the effect upon his affections? How would he regard his new mother—probably a vulgar old woman—or his new brothers and sisters—probably preposterous in their vulgarity? What effect would the discovery have upon his views of life? What upon his politics? What upon his opinions as to small trade, and the mean and undignified and sordid employments by which the bulk of mankind have to live?
At dinner-tables people talked about this mysterious adoption. What could it mean? Why did not the lady come forward? Was it, as some of the papers argued, clearly a case of fraudulent substitution? If not, why did she not come forward? She was dead, perhaps. If so, why did not some one else come forward? If, however, it really was a case of substitution, then the position was intelligible. For instance, the case quoted the day before yesterday by the Daily News; that was, surely, a similar case. And so on; all the speakers wise with the knowledge derived from yesterday's paper. Are we sufficiently grateful to our daily papers and our leader-writers, for providing us with subjects of conversation?
The subject was handled with great vigour one night at Lady Woodroffe's own table. Sir Robert was present; he argued, with ability, that there was no reason to suppose any deception at all; that in his view, the lady had adopted the child, and had resolved to bring up the child in complete ignorance of its relatives, who were presumably of the lowlier sort; that she had seen no reason to take her servants into her confidence, or her friends; and that she now saw no reason to let the young man learn who his real relations were. And he drew a really admirable sketch of the disgust with which the young man would receive his new cousins. Lady Woodroffe, while this agreeable discussion was continued, sat at the head of her table, calm, pale, and collected.
Then there appeared a third advertisement. It was just like the second, except that it now raised the reward to ten thousand guineas. It also included the fact that the child had been received at the Birmingham station by an Indian ayah.
This advertisement caused searchings of heart in all houses where there had been at any time an Indian ayah. The suggestion in every one of these houses was that a child had died, and another had been substituted. The matter was discussed in the servants' hall at Lady Woodroffe's. The butler had been in service with Sir Humphrey and his household for thirty years.
"I came home," he said, "from India with Sir Humphrey. We came to this house. My lady and the ayah—she that died six or seven years ago—were already here with the child—now Sir Humphrey."
"Did you know the child again?"