wned to me, in confession first, but afterwards in talk before your
aunt, his wife, else I never could have disclosed what I now tell you,
that on coming to London he writ a pretended confession to poor Gertrude
Maes--Gertrude Esmond--of his having been married in England previously,
before uniting himself with her; said that his name was not Thomas; that
he was about to quit Europe for the Virginia plantations, where, indeed,
your family had a grant of land from King Charles the First; sent her a
supply of money, the half of the last hundred guineas he had, entreated
her pardon, and bade her farewell.

"Poor Gertrude never thought that the news in this letter might be untrue
as the rest of your father's conduct to her. But though a young man of her
own degree, who knew her history, and whom she liked before she saw the
English gentleman who was the cause of all her misery, offered to marry
her, and to adopt you as his own child, and give you his name, she refused
him. This refusal only angered her father, who had taken her home; she
never held up her head there, being the subject of constant unkindness
after her fall; and some devout ladies of her acquaintance offering to pay
a little pension for her, she went into a convent, and you were put out to
nurse.

"A sister of the young fellow, who would have adopted you as his son, was
the person who took charge of you. Your mother and this person were
cousins. She had just lost a child of her own, which you replaced, your
own mother being too sick and feeble to feed you; and presently your nurse
grew so fond of you, that she even grudged letting you visit the convent
where your mother was, and where the nuns petted the little infant, as
they pitied and loved its unhappy parent. Her vocation became stronger
every day, and at the end of two years she was received as a sister of the
house.

"Your nurse's family were silk-weavers out of France, whither they
returned to Arras in French Flanders, shortly before your mother took her
vows, carrying you with them, then a child of three years old. 'Twas a
town, before the late vigorous measures of the French king, full of
Protestants, and here your nurse's father, old Pastoureau, he with whom
you afterwards lived at Ealing, adopted the reformed doctrines, perverting
all his house with him. They were expelled thence by the edict of his most
Christian Majesty, and came to London, and set up their looms in
Spittlefields. The old man b