"
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.
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