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.
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