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?" "Know the child? I'd know Sir Humphrey's child anywhere. Why, I saw him every day till he was six months old. A lovely child he was, with his light hair and his blue eyes." "Did my lady come from Birmingham?" "What would my lady be doing at Birmingham? She came straight through from Scotland from her noble pa, Lord Dunedin. The ayah told us so." The page, who was listening, resigned, with a sigh, the prospect of getting that reward of ten thousand guineas. Lady Woodroffe, upstairs, read the third advertisement, and grew faint and sick with fear.