'Yes, you are my mother, my own mother; not a dream.'
'Ah! say it again, my child, my child.'
'My own mother,' the boy repeated, raising his thin hand and stroking his mother's face, where tears were now running down unchecked, tears of thankfulness; such as, for many a long year, she had never shed.
With such bliss the stranger cannot intermeddle; but mothers who have had a child restored to them from the very borders of the unseen land will know what Mary Gifford felt.
CHAPTER XIV
WHAT RIGHT?
'Her look and countenance was settled, her face soft, and almost still, of one measure! without any passionate gesture or violent motion, till at length, as it were, awakening and strengthening herself, "Well," she said, "yet this is best; and of this I am sure, that, however they wrong me, they cannot overmaster God. No darkness blinds His eyes, no gaol bars Him out; to whom else should I fly but to Him for succour."'—The Arcadia.
The Countess of Pembroke was sitting in the chamber which overlooked the pleasance at Penshurst and the raised terrace above it, on a quiet autumn day of the year of 1586.
She had come to her early home to arrange the letters and papers which her mother, Lady Mary, had committed to her care on her deathbed.