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