"They are nothing to do with me. My business has been to find a child, and to arrange for your adoption of it. I have therefore, as I told you, arranged with a poor woman who is willing to part with her child." "On my conditions?" "Absolutely. That is--she will never see the child again; she will not ask who takes the child, or where it is taken, or in what position of life it will be brought up. She accepts your assurance that the child will be cared for, and treated kindly. She fully consents." "Poor creature!" "You will give her fifty pounds, and that single payment will terminate the whole business." "Terminate the whole business? Oh, it will begin the whole business!" "There are many reasons for adoption," the doctor continued, returning to the point with which he had no concern. "I have read in books of substituting a child--introducing a child--for the sake of keeping a title, or an estate, or a family." The lady answered as if she had not heard this remark. "The mother consents to sell her child! Poor creature!" "She accepts your conditions. I have told you so. Go your way--she goes hers." The lady reflected for a moment. "Tell me," she said,--"you are a man of science,--in such an adoption----" "Or, perhaps, such a substitution," interrupted the doctor. "Is there not danger of inherited vice, or disease?" "Certainly there is. It is a danger which you must watch in educating the child. He may inherit a tendency to drink: guard against it by keeping him from alcohol of any kind. He may show physical weakness; watch him carefully. But nine-tenths of so-called hereditary disease or vice are due to example and conditions of life." "If we do not know the character of the parents--they may be criminals. What if the child should inherit these instincts?" The doctor, who had been standing, took a chair, and prepared himself to argue the point. He was a young man, with a strong jaw and a square forehead. He had a face and features of rude but vigorous handling; such a face as a noble life would make beautiful in age, and an ignoble life would make hideous. Every man has as many faces as there are years of his life, and we heed them not; yet each follows each in a long procession, ending with the pale and waxen face in the coffin--that solemn face which tells so much.