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?