"Only one thing, sir, that I can remember. It was a miserably bad
season, that year; and many of the children were suffering from it. When
she took the baby away, the lady said to me, laughing, 'Don't be alarmed
about his health. He will be brought up in a better climate than this--I
am going to take him to Switzerland.'"

"To Switzerland? What part of Switzerland?"

"She didn't say, sir."

"Only that faint clue!" said Mr. Wilding. "And a quarter of a century
has passed since the child was taken away! What am I to do?"

"I hope you won't take offence at my freedom, sir," said Mrs. Goldstraw;
"but why should you distress yourself about what is to be done? He may
not be alive now, for anything you know. And, if he is alive, it's not
likely he can be in any distress. The, lady who adopted him was a bred
and born lady--it was easy to see that. And she must have satisfied them
at the Foundling that she could provide for the child, or they would
never have let her take him away. If I was in your place, sir--please to
excuse my saying so--I should comfort myself with remembering that I had
loved that poor lady whose portrait you have got there--truly loved her
as my mother, and that she had truly loved me as her son. All she gave
to you, she gave for the sake of that love. It never altered while she
lived; and it won't alter, I'm sure, as long as _you_ live. How can you
have a better right, sir, to keep what you have got than that?"

Mr. Wilding's immovable honesty saw the fallacy in his housekeeper's
point of view at a glance.