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