I would consider all these steps, I would find some reasons to forget his first resentments, and to think that penance, as he called it, which he had undergone in search of me, an amende honorable, in reparation of the affront given to the kindness of my letter of invitation; and that we might at last make ourselves some satisfaction on both sides for the mortifications past.
I confess I could not hear all this without being moved very much, and yet I continued a little stiff and formal too a good while. I told him that before I could give him any reply to the rest of his discourse I ought to give him the satisfaction of telling him that his son was alive, and that indeed, since I saw him so concerned about it, and mention it with such affection, I was sorry that I had not found out some way or other to let him know it sooner; but that I thought, after his slighting the mother, as above, he had summed up his affection to the child in the letter he had wrote to me about providing for it; and that he had, as other fathers often do, looked upon it as a birth which, being out of the way, was to be forgotten, as its beginning was to be repented of; that, in providing sufficiently for it, he had done more than all such fathers used to do, and might be well satisfied with it.
He answered me that he should have been very glad if I had been so good but to have given him the satisfaction of knowing the poor unfortunate creature was yet alive, and he would have taken some care of it upon himself, and particularly by owning it for a legitimate child, which, where nobody had known to the contrary, would have taken off the infamy which would otherwise cleave to it, and so the child should not itself have known anything of its own disaster; but that he feared it was now too late.
He added that I might see by all his conduct since that, what unhappy mistake drew him into the thing at first, and that he would have been very far from doing the injury to me, or being instrumental to add une miserable (that was his word) to the world, if he had not been drawn into it by the hopes he had of making me his own; but that, if it was possible to rescue the child from the consequences of its unhappy birth, he hoped I would give him leave to do it, and he would let me see that he had both means and affection still to do it; and that, notwithstanding all the misfortunes that had befallen him, nothing that belonged to him, especially by a mother he had such a concern for as he had for me, should ever want what he was in a condition to do for it.
I could not hear this without being sensibly touched with it. I was ashamed that he should show that he had more real affection for the child, though he had never seen it in his life, than I that bore it, for indeed I did not love the child, nor love to see it; and though I had provided for it, yet I did it by Amy's hand, and had not seen it above twice in four years, being privately resolved that when it grew up it should not be able to call me mother.
However, I told him the child was taken care of, and that he need not be anxious about it, unless he suspected that I had less affection for it than he that had never seen it in his life; that he knew what I had promised him to do for it, namely, to give it the thousand pistoles which I had offered him, and which he had declined; that I assured him I had made my will, and that I had left it £5000, and the interest of it till he should come of age, if I died before that time; that I would still be as good as that to it; but if he had a mind to take it from me into his
