Then, as she remembered the helpless infant which she had once held for a brief moment upon her lap, her heart yearned toward him with all a mother's love, and she said to herself:
"I will find the boy, and it may be he will comfort my old age."
On her return to Boston she went to the house of William's father, but everything there was cold and ostentatious. They greeted her warmly, it is true, and paid her marked attention, but she suspected they did it for the money she had in her possession, for the family was extravagant and deeply involved in debt. Once she asked if they knew anything of Ellen's child, and her son replied that he believed he was a clerk of some kind in New York, but none of the family had ever seen him save Will, who had met him once or twice, and who spoke of him as having a little of the Bellenger look and bearing.
Then she came to New York and found her grandson Will, who was less her favorite than ever when she heard how sneeringly he spoke of Walter. From his remarks, she did not expect to meet the latter at the party, but she would find him next day, she said, and when he entered the room she was too much absorbed in her own thoughts to notice him, but when he passed her with Jessie she started, for there was in his face a look like her dead daughter.
"Can it be that handsome young man is Ellen's child?" she said, and she waited anxiously till he appeared again.
He stopped before her then, and with a beating heart she listened to what they called him, and then asked who he was.
"It is my boy,--it is," she murmured between her quivering lips, and as soon as she saw that he was free she joined him, as we have seen, and led him to another room.
For a moment she hesitated, as if uncertain what to say, then, as they were left alone, she began:
"My conduct may seem strange to you, but I cannot help it. Twenty-five years ago a sweet girlish voice called me mother, and the face of her who called me thus was much like yours, young man. She left me one summer morning, and our house was like a tomb without her; but she never came back again, and when I saw her next she lay in her coffin. She was too young to be lying there, for she was scarcely twenty. She died with the shadow of my anger resting on her heart, for when I heard she had married one whom the world said was not her equal, I cast her off, I said she was not mine, and from that day to this the worm of remorse has been gnawing at my heart, for I hear continually the dying message they said she left for me: 'Tell mother to love my baby for the sake of the love she once bore me.' I didn't do it. I steeled my proud heart even against the little boy. But I'm yearning for him now,--yearning for that child to hold up my feeble hands,--to guide my trembling feet and smooth my pathway down into the valley which I must tread ere long."
