 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 to 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 favour 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
