The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders

She was struck dumb at this suggestion, and could not tell what to say

or to think; but, laying aside the supposition as a policy of mine,

continued her importunity on account of her son, and, if possible, to

make up the breach between us two. As to that, I told her that it was

indeed a good design in her, but that it was impossible to be done; and

that if I should reveal to her the truth of what she desired, she would

grant it to be impossible, and cease to desire it. At last I seemed to

be prevailed on by her importunity, and told her I dared trust her with

a secret of the greatest importance, and she would soon see that this

was so, and that I would consent to lodge it in her breast, if she

would engage solemnly not to acquaint her son with it without my

consent.

She was long in promising this part, but rather than not come at the

main secret, she agreed to that too, and after a great many other

preliminaries, I began, and told her the whole story. First I told her

how much she was concerned in all the unhappy breach which had happened

between her son and me, by telling me her own story and her London

name; and that the surprise she saw I was in was upon that occasion.

The I told her my own story, and my name, and assured her, by such

other tokens as she could not deny, that I was no other, nor more or

less, than her own child, her daughter, born of her body in Newgate;

the same that had saved her from the gallows by being in her belly, and

the same that she left in such-and-such hands when she was transported.

It is impossible to express the astonishment she was in; she was not

inclined to believe the story, or to remember the particulars, for she

immediately foresaw the confusion that must follow in the family upon

it. But everything concurred so exactly with the stories she had told

me of herself, and which, if she had not told me, she would perhaps

have been content to have denied, that she had stopped her own mouth,

and she had nothing to do but to take me about the neck and kiss me,

and cry most vehemently over me, without speaking one word for a long

time together. At last she broke out: 'Unhappy child!' says she,

'what miserable chance could bring thee hither? and in the arms of my

own son, too! Dreadful girl,' says she, 'why, we are all undone!

Married to thy own brother! Three children, and two alive, all of the

same flesh and blood! My son and my daughter lying together as husband

and wife! All confusion and distraction for ever! Miserable family!

what will become of us? What is to be said? What is to be done?' And

thus she ran on for a great while; nor had I any power to speak, or if

I had, did I know what to say, for every word wounded me to the soul.

With this kind of amazement on our thoughts we parted for the first

time, though my mother was more surprised than I was, because it was

more news to her than to me. However, she promised again to me at

parting, that she would say nothing of it to her son, till we had

talked of it again.