The tone in which he spoke warned Mrs. Goldstraw that it would be cruel
kindness to let him comfort himself a moment longer with the vain hope
that she might be wrong. A few words more would end it, and those few
words she determined to speak.

"I have told you," she said, "that the child of the lady whose portrait
hangs there, was adopted in its infancy, and taken away by a stranger. I
am as certain of what I say as that I am now sitting here, obliged to
distress you, sir, sorely against my will. Please to carry your mind on,
now, to about three months after that time. I was then at the Foundling,
in London, waiting to take some children to our institution in the
country. There was a question that day about naming an infant--a boy--who
had just been received. We generally named them out of the Directory. On
this occasion, one of the gentlemen who managed the Hospital happened to
be looking over the Register. He noticed that the name of the baby who
had been adopted ('Walter Wilding') was scratched out--for the reason, of
course, that the child had been removed for good from our care. 'Here's
a name to let,' he said. 'Give it to the new foundling who has been
received to-day.' The name was given, and the child was christened. You,
sir, were that child."

The wine-merchant's head dropped on his breast. "I was that child!" he
said to himself, trying helplessly to fix the idea in his mind. "I was
that child!"

"Not very long after you had been received into the Institution, sir,"
pursued Mrs. Goldstraw, "I left my situation there, to be married. If
you will remember that, and if you can give your mind to it, you will see
for yourself how the mistake happened. Between eleven and twelve years