“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!”