‘Your name,’ she said with great effort, looking very earnestly in his face.
‘My name, Madame, is Gerald,’ he replied; ‘but I am called Gerald Kopt, from one Michael Kopt, who has been to me as a father.’
As the youth spoke, the lady became still more agitated. ‘It must be so—I cannot be deceived,’ she murmured; ‘that brow—those eyes—the voice—so like my own, own Gerald—you are—you must be my child.’ Here she threw her arms round the boy’s neck, and burst into a flood of tears.
‘Did I hear aright? Did you say you are my mother?’ exclaimed Gerald, disengaging himself a little from her embrace, that he might look up in her countenance to read her answer even before her tongue could speak it.
‘I am,’ she answered in a calmer tone; ‘I lost an infant on the coast of Russia at the very time stated in your document; and my heart tells me you must be he.’
‘This is happiness beyond anything I could have expected,’ cried Gerald, warmly returning her embrace. ‘I never hoped to find a mother living.’
‘And I never hoped to find my long-lost child,’ replied the lady; ‘but God is good, and his ways are wonderful.’
‘God has indeed been good to me, my mother,’ Gerald responded, now twining his arm fondly round her neck; ‘he provided me with friends who have been as parents to me, and he has by a wonderful providence, brought me here. But tell me dear lady—dear mother,’ he added, his countenance lighting up with great animation—‘tell me; is it true that I am by birth a Pole?’
‘You are,’ Madame Koski replied; ‘your father was a Pole of noble birth.’
‘I have learned to call those great and noble who perform great and noble actions, dear lady,’ cried Gerald. ‘But I do rejoice in hearing that I belong to that brave and patriotic land.’