He called the messenger in, after some little stay, and asked him where
the person was who gave him the letter. The messenger told him the
place, which was about seven miles off, so he bid him stay, and
ordering a horse to be got ready, and two servants, away he came to me
with the messenger. Let any one judge the consternation I was in when
my messenger came back, and told me the old gentleman was not at home,
but his son was come along with him, and was just coming up to me. I
was perfectly confounded, for I knew not whether it was peace or war,
nor could I tell how to behave; however, I had but a very few moments
to think, for my son was at the heels of the messenger, and coming up
into my lodgings, asked the fellow at the door something. I suppose it
was, for I did not hear it so as to understand it, which was the
gentlewoman that sent him; for the messenger said, 'There she is, sir';
at which he comes directly up to me, kisses me, took me in his arms,
and embraced me with so much passion that he could not speak, but I
could feel his breast heave and throb like a child, that cries, but
sobs, and cannot cry it out.
I can neither express nor describe the joy that touched my very soul
when I found, for it was easy to discover that part, that he came not
as a stranger, but as a son to a mother, and indeed as a son who had
never before known what a mother of his own was; in short, we cried
over one another a considerable while, when at last he broke out first.
'My dear mother,' says he, 'are you still alive? I never expected to
have seen your face.' As for me, I could say nothing a great while.
After we had both recovered ourselves a little, and were able to talk,
he told me how things stood. As to what I had written to his father, he
told me he had not showed my letter to his father, or told him anything
about it; that what his grandmother left me was in his hands, and that
he would do me justice to my full satisfaction; that as to his father,
he was old and infirm both in body and mind; that he was very fretful
and passionate, almost blind, and capable of nothing; and he questioned
whether he would know how to act in an affair which was of so nice a
nature as this; and that therefore he had come himself, as well to
satisfy himself in seeing me, which he could not restrain himself from,
as also to put it into my power to make a judgment, after I had seen
how things were, whether I would discover myself to his father or no.