Victorian sensibilities, but I liked the story well enough anyways.

I was touched by the message about adoption, and nobleman Godfrey's assumptions about it were well played. "Was it not an appropriate thing for people in a high station to take a charge off the hands of a man in a lower? It seemed an eminently appropriate thing to Godfrey, for reasons that were known only to himself; and by a common fallacy, he imagined the measure would be easy because he had private motives for desiring it." I always forget how minds of other times can be sharply accurate for today's world.