"On that very day when the child died?" "On that very day," she replied, firmly and without hesitation. "Lady Woodroffe, I cannot believe what you say." "You can prove what you like," she repeated, "but you cannot prove that I bought the child." "To speak plainly, I don't believe one word about your proving an _alibi_, Lady Woodroffe, any more than I believe that remarkably bold falsehood about the child's clothes. We shall prove the death of the child beyond a doubt. You can then, if you please, find out something that will amuse the world about Humphrey. As for the publicity----" "Since you will only prove that a woman took my name, I care nothing. My reputation is not likely to be injured by such a story. Who will believe against my word--that I--Lady Woodroffe--a leader, sir, in a world of which you and your like know nothing--the world which advances humanity--the world of religion and of charity--the world which combats vice unceasingly--should condescend to a crime so ignoble and so purposeless?" "I am not concerned with your credibilities, Lady Woodroffe. I learn that you made a large use of them with Mrs. Haveril, and only desisted when they proved a failure. Then you took to defiance." "The publicity will fall upon the fashionable physician, the great man of science, the head of his profession, who will have to acknowledge that he found a child and bought it for a certain unknown person--a noble way for a young physician to earn a fee! The publicity will also fall upon the now notorious lady who has got up in the world since she sold her only child for fifty pounds, to keep it and herself out of the workhouse. No injurious publicity will fall upon me, other than the discovery of some woman who once took my name." "You are identified by your photograph. You forget that." "Can I? After four and twenty years? Can any woman of my age--forty-nine--be identified, by a stranger, with another woman of twenty-five or thereabouts? Now, Mr. Richard Woodroffe, what else have you got to say?" "I have only this to say. I came here to-day, Lady Woodroffe, in the hope that what I have told you would show you the danger of your position. For the sake of this lady, who is worn almost to death by the anxiety of her situation, I hoped that you would confess." "Confess! I to confess! You speak as if I were a common criminal." "No," said Richard, "not common by any means." Lady Woodroffe left her chair and stepped over to the fireplace. She looked older, and the authority went out of her very strangely. She laid her hand on the shelf, as if for support, and she spoke slowly--with no show of anger--slowly, and with sadness. "I think, sir, I do think, that if you could consider the meaning of this charge to a person in my position, the suffering you inflict upon me, the mischief you may do to me, and I know not how many more, by persisting in this charge, you would abandon it." "I cannot; I am acting for another."