“Do you know this place, sir?” asked Tom, with a return of his old manner, as making a sudden turn the little carriage drove through an open gate, and up to a large old-fashioned house. A carriage was waiting at the door.
There could be no mistake. How delightful! and who was that? Mammy! at the hall door, and in an instant they were locked in one another’s arms, and “Oh! the darlin’,” and “Mammy, mammy, mammy!” were the only words audible, half stifled in sobs and kisses.
In a minute more there came into the hall—smiling, weeping, and with hands extended toward him, the pretty lady dressed in black, and her weeping grew into a wild cry, as coming quickly she caught him to her heart. “My darling, my child, my blessed boy, you’re the image—Oh! darling, I loved you the moment I saw you, and now I know it all.”
The boy was worn out. His march, including his divergence from his intended route, had not been much less than thirty miles, and all in chill and wet.
They got him to his bed and made him thoroughly comfortable, and with mammy at his bedside, and her hand, to make quite sure of her, fast in his, he fell into a deep sleep.
Alice had already heard enough to convince her of the boy’s identity, but an urgent message from Harry, who was dying, determined her to go at once to Wyvern to see him, as he desired. So, leaving the boy in charge of “mammy,” she was soon on her way to the old seat of the Fairfields.
If Harry had not known that he was dying, no power could ever have made him confess the story he had to tell.
There were two points on which he greatly insisted.
The first was, that believing that his brother was really married to Bertha Velderkaust, he was justified in holding that his nephew had no legal right to succeed.
The second was, that he had resolved, although he might have wavered lately a little, never to marry, and to educate the boy better than ever he was educated himself, and finally to make him heir to Wyvern, pretending him to be an illegitimate son of his own.