Chapter: "Inconsistencies," answered Imlac, "cannot both be right,
    but imputed to man they may both be true."--Rasselas.


The same night, when Mr. Bulstrode returned from a journey to Brassing
on business, his good wife met him in the entrance-hall and drew him
into his private sitting-room.

"Nicholas," she said, fixing her honest eyes upon him anxiously, "there
has been such a disagreeable man here asking for you--it has made me
quite uncomfortable."

"What kind of man, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, dreadfully certain of
the answer.

"A red-faced man with large whiskers, and most impudent in his manner.
He declared he was an old friend of yours, and said you would be sorry
not to see him.  He wanted to wait for you here, but I told him he
could see you at the Bank to-morrow morning.  Most impudent he
was!--stared at me, and said his friend Nick had luck in wives.  I
don't believe he would have gone away, if Blucher had not happened to
break his chain and come running round on the gravel--for I was in the
garden; so I said, 'You'd better go away--the dog is very fierce, and I
can't hold him.'  Do you really know anything of such a man?"

"I believe I know who he is, my dear," said Mr. Bulstrode, in his usual
subdued voice, "an unfortunate dissolute wretch, whom I helped too much
in days gone by.  However, I presume you will not be troubled by him
again.  He will probably come to the Bank--to beg, doubtless."

No more was said on the subject until the next day, when Mr. Bulstrode
had returned from the town and was dressing for dinner.  His wife, not
sure that he was come home, looked into his dressing-room and saw him
with his coat and cravat off, leaning one arm on a chest of drawers and
staring absently at the ground.  He started nervously and looked up as
she entered.

"You look very ill, Nicholas.  Is there anything the matter?"

"I have a good deal of pain in my head," said Mr. Bulstrode, who was so
frequently ailing that his wife was always ready to believe in this
cause of depression.

"Sit down and let me sponge it with vinegar."

Physically Mr. Bulstrode did not want the vinegar, but morally the
affectionate attention soothed him.  Though always polite, it was his
habit to receive such services with marital coolness, as his wife's
duty.  But to-day, while she was bending over him, he said, "You are
very good, Harriet," in a tone which had something new in it to her
ear; she did not know exactly what the novelty was, but her woman's
solicitude shaped itself into a darting thought that he might be going
to have an illness.

"Has anything worried you?" she said.  "Did that man come to you at the
Bank?"

"Yes; it was as I had supposed.  He is a man who at one time might have
done better.  But he has sunk into a drunken debauched creature."

"Is he quite gone away?" said Mrs. Bulstrode, anxiously but for certain
reasons she refrained from adding, "It was very disagreeable to hear
him calling himself a friend of yours."  At that moment she would not
have liked to say anything which implied her habitual consciousness
that her husband's earlier connections were not quite on a level with
her own.  Not that she knew much about them.  That her husband had at
first been employed in a bank, that he had afterwards entered into what
he called city business and gained a fortune before he was
three-and-thirty, that he had married a widow who was much older than
himself--a Dissenter, and in other ways probably of that
disadvantageous quality usually perceptible in a first wife if inquired
into with the dispassionate judgment of a second--was almost as much as
she had cared to learn beyond the glimpses which Mr. Bulstrode's
narrative occasionally gave of his early bent towards religion, his
inclination to be a preacher, and his association with missionary and
philanthropic efforts.  She believed in him as an excellent man whose
piety carried a peculiar eminence in belonging to a layman, whose
influence had turned her own mind toward seriousness, and whose share
of perishable good had been the means of raising her own position.  But
she also liked to think that it was well in every sense for Mr.
Bulstrode to have won the hand of Harriet Vincy; whose family was
undeniable in a Middlemarch light--a better light surely than any
thrown in London thoroughfares or dissenting chapel-yards. The
unreformed provincial mind distrusted London; and while true religion
was everywhere saving, honest Mrs. Bulstrode was convinced that to be
saved in the Church was more respectable.  She so much wished to ignore
towards others that her husband had ever been a London Dissenter, that
she liked to keep it out of sight even in talking to him.  He was quite
aware of this; indeed in some respects he was rather afraid of this
ingenuous wife, whose imitative piety and native worldliness were
equally sincere, who had nothing to be ashamed of, and whom he had
married out of a thorough inclination still subsisting.  But his fears
were such as belong to a man who cares to maintain his recognized
supremacy: the loss of high consideration from his wife, as from every
one else who did not clearly hate him out of enmity to the truth, would
be as the beginning of death to him.  When she said--

"Is he quite gone away?"

"Oh, I trust so," he answered, with an effort to throw as much sober
unconcern into his tone as possible!

But in truth Mr. Bulstrode was very far from a state of quiet trust.
In the interview at the Bank, Raffles had made it evident that his
eagerness to torment was almost as strong in him as any other greed.
He had frankly said that he had turned out of the way to come to
Middlemarch, just to look about him and see whether the neighborhood
would suit him to live in.  He had certainly had a few debts to pay
more than he expected, but the two hundred pounds were not gone yet: a
cool five-and-twenty would suffice him to go away with for the present.
What he had wanted chiefly was to see his friend Nick and family, and
know all about the prosperity of a man to whom he was so much attached.
By-and-by he might come back for a longer stay.  This time Raffles
declined to be "seen off the premises," as he expressed it--declined to
quit Middlemarch under Bulstrode's eyes.  He meant to go by coach the
next day--if he chose.

Bulstrode felt himself helpless.  Neither threats nor coaxing could
avail: he could not count on any persistent fear nor on any promise.
On the contrary, he felt a cold certainty at his heart that
Raffles--unless providence sent death to hinder him--would come back
to Middlemarch before long.  And that certainty was a terror.

It was not that he was in danger of legal punishment or of beggary: he
was in danger only of seeing disclosed to the judgment of his neighbors
and the mournful perception of his wife certain facts of his past life
which would render him an object of scorn and an opprobrium of the
religion with which he had diligently associated himself.  The terror
of being judged sharpens the memory: it sends an inevitable glare over
that long-unvisited past which has been habitually recalled only in
general phrases.  Even without memory, the life is bound into one by a
zone of dependence in growth and decay; but intense memory forces a man
to own his blameworthy past.  With memory set smarting like a reopened
wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn
preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose
from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing
shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.

Into this second life Bulstrode's past had now risen, only the
pleasures of it seeming to have lost their quality.  Night and day,
without interruption save of brief sleep which only wove retrospect and
fear into a fantastic present, he felt the scenes of his earlier life
coming between him and everything else, as obstinately as when we look
through the window from a lighted room, the objects we turn our backs
on are still before us, instead of the grass and the trees. The
successive events inward and outward were there in one view: though
each might be dwelt on in turn, the rest still kept their hold in the
consciousness.

Once more he saw himself the young banker's clerk, with an agreeable
person, as clever in figures as he was fluent in speech and fond of
theological definition: an eminent though young member of a Calvinistic
dissenting church at Highbury, having had striking experience in
conviction of sin and sense of pardon.  Again he heard himself called
for as Brother Bulstrode in prayer meetings, speaking on religious
platforms, preaching in private houses.  Again he felt himself thinking
of the ministry as possibly his vocation, and inclined towards
missionary labor.  That was the happiest time of his life: that was the
spot he would have chosen now to awake in and find the rest a dream.
The people among whom Brother Bulstrode was distinguished were very
few, but they were very near to him, and stirred his satisfaction the
more; his power stretched through a narrow space, but he felt its
effect the more intensely.  He believed without effort in the peculiar
work of grace within him, and in the signs that God intended him for
special instrumentality.

Then came the moment of transition; it was with the sense of promotion
he had when he, an orphan educated at a commercial charity-school, was
invited to a fine villa belonging to Mr. Dunkirk, the richest man in
the congregation.  Soon he became an intimate there, honored for his
piety by the wife, marked out for his ability by the husband, whose
wealth was due to a flourishing city and west-end trade.  That was the
setting-in of a new current for his ambition, directing his prospects
of "instrumentality" towards the uniting of distinguished religious
gifts with successful business.

By-and-by came a decided external leading: a confidential subordinate
partner died, and nobody seemed to the principal so well fitted to fill
the severely felt vacancy as his young friend Bulstrode, if he would
become confidential accountant.  The offer was accepted.  The business
was a pawnbroker's, of the most magnificent sort both in extent and
profits; and on a short acquaintance with it Bulstrode became aware
that one source of magnificent profit was the easy reception of any
goods offered, without strict inquiry as to where they came from.  But
there was a branch house at the west end, and no pettiness or dinginess
to give suggestions of shame.

He remembered his first moments of shrinking.  They were private, and
were filled with arguments; some of these taking the form of prayer.
The business was established and had old roots; is it not one thing to
set up a new gin-palace and another to accept an investment in an old
one?  The profits made out of lost souls--where can the line be drawn
at which they begin in human transactions?  Was it not even God's way
of saving His chosen?  "Thou knowest,"--the young Bulstrode had said
then, as the older Bulstrode was saying now--"Thou knowest how loose
my soul sits from these things--how I view them all as implements for
tilling Thy garden rescued here and there from the wilderness."

Metaphors and precedents were not wanting; peculiar spiritual
experiences were not wanting which at last made the retention of his
position seem a service demanded of him: the vista of a fortune had
already opened itself, and Bulstrode's shrinking remained private.  Mr.
Dunkirk had never expected that there would be any shrinking at all: he
had never conceived that trade had anything to do with the scheme of
salvation.  And it was true that Bulstrode found himself carrying on
two distinct lives; his religious activity could not be incompatible
with his business as soon as he had argued himself into not feeling it
incompatible.

Mentally surrounded with that past again, Bulstrode had the same
pleas--indeed, the years had been perpetually spinning them into
intricate thickness, like masses of spider-web, padding the moral
sensibility; nay, as age made egoism more eager but less enjoying, his
soul had become more saturated with the belief that he did everything
for God's sake, being indifferent to it for his own.  And yet--if he
could be back in that far-off spot with his youthful poverty--why, then
he would choose to be a missionary.

But the train of causes in which he had locked himself went on.  There
was trouble in the fine villa at Highbury.  Years before, the only
daughter had run away, defied her parents, and gone on the stage; and
now the only boy died, and after a short time Mr. Dunkirk died also.
The wife, a simple pious woman, left with all the wealth in and out of
the magnificent trade, of which she never knew the precise nature, had
come to believe in Bulstrode, and innocently adore him as women often
adore their priest or "man-made" minister.  It was natural that after a
time marriage should have been thought of between them.  But Mrs.
Dunkirk had qualms and yearnings about her daughter, who had long been
regarded as lost both to God and her parents.  It was known that the
daughter had married, but she was utterly gone out of sight.  The
mother, having lost her boy, imagined a grandson, and wished in a
double sense to reclaim her daughter.  If she were found, there would
be a channel for property--perhaps a wide one--in the provision for
several grandchildren.  Efforts to find her must be made before Mrs.
Dunkirk would marry again.  Bulstrode concurred; but after
advertisement as well as other modes of inquiry had been tried, the
mother believed that her daughter was not to be found, and consented to
marry without reservation of property.

The daughter had been found; but only one man besides Bulstrode knew
it, and he was paid for keeping silence and carrying himself away.

That was the bare fact which Bulstrode was now forced to see in the
rigid outline with which acts present themselves onlookers.  But for
himself at that distant time, and even now in burning memory, the fact
was broken into little sequences, each justified as it came by
reasonings which seemed to prove it righteous.  Bulstrode's course up
to that time had, he thought, been sanctioned by remarkable
providences, appearing to point the way for him to be the agent in
making the best use of a large property and withdrawing it from
perversion.  Death and other striking dispositions, such as feminine
trustfulness, had come; and Bulstrode would have adopted Cromwell's
words--"Do you call these bare events?  The Lord pity you!"  The
events were comparatively small, but the essential condition was
there--namely, that they were in favor of his own ends.  It was easy
for him to settle what was due from him to others by inquiring what
were God's intentions with regard to himself.  Could it be for God's
service that this fortune should in any considerable proportion go to a
young woman and her husband who were given up to the lightest pursuits,
and might scatter it abroad in triviality--people who seemed to lie
outside the path of remarkable providences?  Bulstrode had never said
to himself beforehand, "The daughter shall not be found"--nevertheless
when the moment came he kept her existence hidden; and when other
moments followed, he soothed the mother with consolation in the
probability that the unhappy young woman might be no more.

There were hours in which Bulstrode felt that his action was
unrighteous; but how could he go back?  He had mental exercises, called
himself nought, laid hold on redemption, and went on in his course of
instrumentality.  And after five years Death again came to widen his
path, by taking away his wife.  He did gradually withdraw his capital,
but he did not make the sacrifices requisite to put an end to the
business, which was carried on for thirteen years afterwards before it
finally collapsed.  Meanwhile Nicholas Bulstrode had used his hundred
thousand discreetly, and was become provincially, solidly important--a
banker, a Churchman, a public benefactor; also a sleeping partner in
trading concerns, in which his ability was directed to economy in the
raw material, as in the case of the dyes which rotted Mr. Vincy's silk.
And now, when this respectability had lasted undisturbed for nearly
thirty years--when all that preceded it had long lain benumbed in the
consciousness--that past had risen and immersed his thought as if with
the terrible irruption of a new sense overburthening the feeble being.

Meanwhile, in his conversation with Raffles, he had learned something
momentous, something which entered actively into the struggle of his
longings and terrors.  There, he thought, lay an opening towards
spiritual, perhaps towards material rescue.

The spiritual kind of rescue was a genuine need with him.  There may be
coarse hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emotions for the
sake of gulling the world, but Bulstrode was not one of them.  He was
simply a man whose desires had been stronger than his theoretic
beliefs, and who had gradually explained the gratification of his
desires into satisfactory agreement with those beliefs.  If this be
hypocrisy, it is a process which shows itself occasionally in us all,
to whatever confession we belong, and whether we believe in the future
perfection of our race or in the nearest date fixed for the end of the
world; whether we regard the earth as a putrefying nidus for a saved
remnant, including ourselves, or have a passionate belief in the
solidarity of mankind.

The service he could do to the cause of religion had been through life
the ground he alleged to himself for his choice of action: it had been
the motive which he had poured out in his prayers.  Who would use money
and position better than he meant to use them?  Who could surpass him
in self-abhorrence and exaltation of God's cause?  And to Mr. Bulstrode
God's cause was something distinct from his own rectitude of conduct:
it enforced a discrimination of God's enemies, who were to be used
merely as instruments, and whom it would be as well if possible to keep
out of money and consequent influence.  Also, profitable investments in
trades where the power of the prince of this world showed its most
active devices, became sanctified by a right application of the profits
in the hands of God's servant.

This implicit reasoning is essentially no more peculiar to evangelical
belief than the use of wide phrases for narrow motives is peculiar to
Englishmen.  There is no general doctrine which is not capable of
eating out our morality if unchecked by the deep-seated habit of direct
fellow-feeling with individual fellow-men.

But a man who believes in something else than his own greed, has
necessarily a conscience or standard to which he more or less adapts
himself.  Bulstrode's standard had been his serviceableness to God's
cause: "I am sinful and nought--a vessel to be consecrated by use--but
use me!"--had been the mould into which he had constrained his immense
need of being something important and predominating.  And now had come
a moment in which that mould seemed in danger of being broken and
utterly cast away.

What if the acts he had reconciled himself to because they made him a
stronger instrument of the divine glory, were to become the pretext of
the scoffer, and a darkening of that glory?  If this were to be the
ruling of Providence, he was cast out from the temple as one who had
brought unclean offerings.

He had long poured out utterances of repentance.  But today a
repentance had come which was of a bitterer flavor, and a threatening
Providence urged him to a kind of propitiation which was not simply a
doctrinal transaction.  The divine tribunal had changed its aspect for
him; self-prostration was no longer enough, and he must bring
restitution in his hand.  It was really before his God that Bulstrode
was about to attempt such restitution as seemed possible: a great dread
had seized his susceptible frame, and the scorching approach of shame
wrought in him a new spiritual need.  Night and day, while the
resurgent threatening past was making a conscience within him, he was
thinking by what means he could recover peace and trust--by what
sacrifice he could stay the rod.  His belief in these moments of dread
was, that if he spontaneously did something right, God would save him
from the consequences of wrong-doing. For religion can only change when
the emotions which fill it are changed; and the religion of personal
fear remains nearly at the level of the savage.

He had seen Raffles actually going away on the Brassing coach, and this
was a temporary relief; it removed the pressure of an immediate dread,
but did not put an end to the spiritual conflict and the need to win
protection.  At last he came to a difficult resolve, and wrote a letter
to Will Ladislaw, begging him to be at the Shrubs that evening for a
private interview at nine o'clock. Will had felt no particular surprise
at the request, and connected it with some new notions about the
"Pioneer;" but when he was shown into Mr. Bulstrode's private room, he
was struck with the painfully worn look on the banker's face, and was
going to say, "Are you ill?" when, checking himself in that abruptness,
he only inquired after Mrs. Bulstrode, and her satisfaction with the
picture bought for her.

"Thank you, she is quite satisfied; she has gone out with her daughters
this evening.  I begged you to come, Mr. Ladislaw, because I have a
communication of a very private--indeed, I will say, of a sacredly
confidential nature, which I desire to make to you.  Nothing, I dare
say, has been farther from your thoughts than that there had been
important ties in the past which could connect your history with mine."

Will felt something like an electric shock.  He was already in a state
of keen sensitiveness and hardly allayed agitation on the subject of
ties in the past, and his presentiments were not agreeable.  It seemed
like the fluctuations of a dream--as if the action begun by that loud
bloated stranger were being carried on by this pale-eyed sickly looking
piece of respectability, whose subdued tone and glib formality of
speech were at this moment almost as repulsive to him as their
remembered contrast.  He answered, with a marked change of color--

"No, indeed, nothing."

"You see before you, Mr. Ladislaw, a man who is deeply stricken.  But
for the urgency of conscience and the knowledge that I am before the
bar of One who seeth not as man seeth, I should be under no compulsion
to make the disclosure which has been my object in asking you to come
here to-night. So far as human laws go, you have no claim on me
whatever."

Will was even more uncomfortable than wondering.  Mr. Bulstrode had
paused, leaning his head on his hand, and looking at the floor.  But he
now fixed his examining glance on Will and said--

"I am told that your mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk, and that she ran
away from her friends to go on the stage.  Also, that your father was
at one time much emaciated by illness.  May I ask if you can confirm
these statements?"

"Yes, they are all true," said Will, struck with the order in which an
inquiry had come, that might have been expected to be preliminary to
the banker's previous hints.  But Mr. Bulstrode had to-night followed
the order of his emotions; he entertained no doubt that the opportunity
for restitution had come, and he had an overpowering impulse towards
the penitential expression by which he was deprecating chastisement.

"Do you know any particulars of your mother's family?" he continued.

"No; she never liked to speak of them.  She was a very generous,
honorable woman," said Will, almost angrily.

"I do not wish to allege anything against her.  Did she never mention
her mother to you at all?"

"I have heard her say that she thought her mother did not know the
reason of her running away.  She said 'poor mother' in a pitying tone."

"That mother became my wife," said Bulstrode, and then paused a moment
before he added, "you have a claim on me, Mr. Ladislaw: as I said
before, not a legal claim, but one which my conscience recognizes.  I
was enriched by that marriage--a result which would probably not have
taken place--certainly not to the same extent--if your grandmother
could have discovered her daughter.  That daughter, I gather, is no
longer living!"

"No," said Will, feeling suspicion and repugnance rising so strongly
within him, that without quite knowing what he did, he took his hat
from the floor and stood up.  The impulse within him was to reject the
disclosed connection.

"Pray be seated, Mr. Ladislaw," said Bulstrode, anxiously.  "Doubtless
you are startled by the suddenness of this discovery.  But I entreat
your patience with one who is already bowed down by inward trial."

Will reseated himself, feeling some pity which was half contempt for
this voluntary self-abasement of an elderly man.

"It is my wish, Mr. Ladislaw, to make amends for the deprivation which
befell your mother.  I know that you are without fortune, and I wish to
supply you adequately from a store which would have probably already
been yours had your grandmother been certain of your mother's existence
and been able to find her."

Mr. Bulstrode paused.  He felt that he was performing a striking piece
of scrupulosity in the judgment of his auditor, and a penitential act
in the eyes of God.  He had no clew to the state of Will Ladislaw's
mind, smarting as it was from the clear hints of Raffles, and with its
natural quickness in construction stimulated by the expectation of
discoveries which he would have been glad to conjure back into
darkness.  Will made no answer for several moments, till Mr. Bulstrode,
who at the end of his speech had cast his eyes on the floor, now raised
them with an examining glance, which Will met fully, saying--

"I suppose you did know of my mother's existence, and knew where she
might have been found."

Bulstrode shrank--there was a visible quivering in his face and hands.
He was totally unprepared to have his advances met in this way, or to
find himself urged into more revelation than he had beforehand set down
as needful.  But at that moment he dared not tell a lie, and he felt
suddenly uncertain of his ground which he had trodden with some
confidence before.

"I will not deny that you conjecture rightly," he answered, with a
faltering in his tone.  "And I wish to make atonement to you as the one
still remaining who has suffered a loss through me.  You enter, I
trust, into my purpose, Mr. Ladislaw, which has a reference to higher
than merely human claims, and as I have already said, is entirely
independent of any legal compulsion.  I am ready to narrow my own
resources and the prospects of my family by binding myself to allow you
five hundred pounds yearly during my life, and to leave you a
proportional capital at my death--nay, to do still more, if more should
be definitely necessary to any laudable project on your part."  Mr.
Bulstrode had gone on to particulars in the expectation that these
would work strongly on Ladislaw, and merge other feelings in grateful
acceptance.

But Will was looking as stubborn as possible, with his lip pouting and
his fingers in his side-pockets. He was not in the least touched, and
said firmly,--

"Before I make any reply to your proposition, Mr. Bulstrode, I must beg
you to answer a question or two.  Were you connected with the business
by which that fortune you speak of was originally made?"

Mr. Bulstrode's thought was, "Raffles has told him."  How could he
refuse to answer when he had volunteered what drew forth the question?
He answered, "Yes."

"And was that business--or was it not--a thoroughly dishonorable
one--nay, one that, if its nature had been made public, might have
ranked those concerned in it with thieves and convicts?"

Will's tone had a cutting bitterness: he was moved to put his question
as nakedly as he could.

Bulstrode reddened with irrepressible anger.  He had been prepared for
a scene of self-abasement, but his intense pride and his habit of
supremacy overpowered penitence, and even dread, when this young man,
whom he had meant to benefit, turned on him with the air of a judge.

"The business was established before I became connected with it, sir;
nor is it for you to institute an inquiry of that kind," he answered,
not raising his voice, but speaking with quick defiantness.

"Yes, it is," said Will, starting up again with his hat in his hand.
"It is eminently mine to ask such questions, when I have to decide
whether I will have transactions with you and accept your money.  My
unblemished honor is important to me.  It is important to me to have no
stain on my birth and connections.  And now I find there is a stain
which I can't help.  My mother felt it, and tried to keep as clear of
it as she could, and so will I.  You shall keep your ill-gotten money.
If I had any fortune of my own, I would willingly pay it to any one who
could disprove what you have told me.  What I have to thank you for is
that you kept the money till now, when I can refuse it.  It ought to
lie with a man's self that he is a gentleman.  Good-night, sir."

Bulstrode was going to speak, but Will, with determined quickness, was
out of the room in an instant, and in another the hall-door had closed
behind him.  He was too strongly possessed with passionate rebellion
against this inherited blot which had been thrust on his knowledge to
reflect at present whether he had not been too hard on Bulstrode--too
arrogantly merciless towards a man of sixty, who was making efforts at
retrieval when time had rendered them vain.

No third person listening could have thoroughly understood the
impetuosity of Will's repulse or the bitterness of his words.  No one
but himself then knew how everything connected with the sentiment of
his own dignity had an immediate bearing for him on his relation to
Dorothea and to Mr. Casaubon's treatment of him.  And in the rush of
impulses by which he flung back that offer of Bulstrode's there was
mingled the sense that it would have been impossible for him ever to
tell Dorothea that he had accepted it.

As for Bulstrode--when Will was gone he suffered a violent reaction,
and wept like a woman.  It was the first time he had encountered an
open expression of scorn from any man higher than Raffles; and with
that scorn hurrying like venom through his system, there was no
sensibility left to consolations.  But the relief of weeping had to be
checked.  His wife and daughters soon came home from hearing the
address of an Oriental missionary, and were full of regret that papa
had not heard, in the first instance, the interesting things which they
tried to repeat to him.

Perhaps, through all other hidden thoughts, the one that breathed most
comfort was, that Will Ladislaw at least was not likely to publish what
had taken place that evening.

 When Mr. Bulstrode gets home after the day of the auction, his wife tells him that someone had come to see him. It was Raffles. Raffles goes to see him the next day at the bank, and he comes home looking anxious. His wife thinks he has a headache, but he's really just thinking about his past, and wondering what to do about Raffles, who keeps haunting him. We finally learn more about Bulstrode's past as he goes into lengthy reflection about it: he was a young banking clerk in London, and caught the attention of the owner of a trading house who went to the same church he did. He eventually became a partner at the trading house, which was really more like a high-end pawnshop that didn't ask where the goods they sold came from. Bulstrode had some prickings of conscience, but learned to ignore them. He learns more about the Dunkirk family: they had a daughter who ran away from home some years before, and a son who died. After a while, the senior partner, Mr. Dunkirk, died, leaving Bulstrode as the sole owner of the business. The wife, Mrs. Dunkirk, didn't know anything about her husband's shady business. She fell in love with the younger Bulstrode, but before she would agree to marry him, she wanted to search for her daughter. After all, if the daughter were alive, some share of the family fortune should go to her. Bulstrode agreed to this, and did find Sarah Dunkirk , but concealed it from Mrs. Dunkirk. Mrs. Dunkirk believed her daughter to be dead, and agreed to marry Bulstrode. Bulstrode's conscience, in present-day Middlemarch, is starting to prick him again , but how can undo what he did then? Raffles is the only other person who knows that Bulstrode basically swooped in and took the family fortune away from Sarah Dunkirk , and that the family fortune was made in shady ways. Bulstrode is having a harder time justifying his past actions to himself . So he decides to do right by Will Ladislaw. He asks Will to meet him in a private room at a pub. Will assumes that it has something to do with the Pioneer newspaper. Bulstrode asks if it's true that Will's mother's name was Sarah Dunkirk. Yes, Will says. Bulstrode says what Will already knows - that Sarah Dunkirk had run away from her family, but that her mother had never known the reason why. Bulstrode then tells Will that he had married Sarah's mother, and was enriched by the marriage, but that he couldn't have gotten the money had Sarah not run away. Will is put off by the information, although he doesn't know why. Bulstrode adds that Will has no legal claim on him . Will asks if Bulstrode had known where Sarah was, but concealed it from her mother. Bulstrode can't bring himself to lie. He hadn't expected Will to ask that. He admits that he did know that Sarah was alive. Bulstrode then offers to pay Will five hundred pounds a year, and to leave him something when he dies, as a way to atone for what he did to Sarah. Will then asks whether Bulstrode was involved in the family business. Bulstrode realizes that Raffles must have told him. But again, he can't deny it. Will then refuses any and all money from Bulstrode - he calls it "ill-gotten" money - and says that his mother had tried to stay clear of that whole business, and he means to, as well. The bitterness and scorn in Will's voice makes Bulstrode break down and cry after Will leaves. But at least, he figures, Will is unlikely to tell anyone about it.

