He thought it best, however, to reassure Lady Woodroffe. "I hoped," he said, "that we should have no further occasion to speak about a certain transaction. I suppose, however, that you have heard of certain advertisements?" "I have. Do you think----?" "I do not think. Nay, I am certain. Lady Woodroffe, remember that there is only one person who knows the two women engaged in that transaction. I stood between them. I am not going to bring them together unless you desire me to do so. I came to say this, in case you should be in the least degree uneasy." "Thank you, Sir Robert," she answered humbly. She trusted in that square-jawed, beetle-browed man; yet she was humiliated. "I certainly confide in you." 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?