Mr. Gurth Egerton’s interest in Gertie Heckett was something wonderful. It took him often to the residence of the Adrians. There he was now a welcome guest, for he had soon found out Mr. Adrian’s weak side and opened fire upon it.

In his travels he had been among some of the interesting people Mr. Adrian delighted to honour, and his conversation was almost as interesting as the books. Marvellous stories had Gurth to tell of foreign lands, and especially of those lands where the natives were of the barbarous type dear to Ruth’s father.

Either Egerton had seen a great deal, or he was a good romancer. But, whether he dealt in fact or in fiction, his wares were attractive enough to command old Adrian’s custom, and Gurth never called and stayed ‘just to have a eup of tea’ without being invited again and pressed to come early.

Gurth’s account of his bachelor loneliness had not been lost upon Mrs. Adrian, and as he never contradicted her, but set himself studiously to please her, he gradually won his way into the old lady’s good graces.

Ruth was grateful to Gurth for the interest he took in Gertie. She knew he was rich, and she had heard he was a charitable gentleman. He entered into all her philanthropic schemes, begged that she would be his almoner and let him know of any deserving cases she cameupon in her visits to the sick and poor. Altogether Gurth Egerton proved himself a most desirable acquisition to the Adrian family circle, and was highly approved of by everyone but Lion.

Lion always growled at him, and nothing would induce him to be friendly.

Gertie apologized for her favourite’s behaviour, and Gurth turned off the unpleasant effect of the dog’s determined hostility with a joke.

Mrs. Adrian, when Lion had, on the second or third occasion of his rudeness to her visitor, been turned out of the room, suggested that the dog had been brought up among low people, and had low people’s natural antipathy to gentlefolks.

Ruth did not take up the challenge on Gertie’s behalf. She knew that her mother had really grown fond of the child, and that she could no more help saying spiteful things occasionally than Lion could help growling. In both cases ‘it was their nature to.’

Gurth played his cards so well and grew so rapidly in favour with the Adrians that he soon felt emboldened to allow his feelings for Ruth to become gradually apparent.

Ruth was the last person to perceive the impression she had made, and it was forced upon her by a little conversation which is worth repeating.

One evening, when the Adrians were alone, and after Gertie had gone to bed, something brought up Gurth’s name, and then Marston’s.

‘They’re not to be named in the same breath,’ said Mrs. Adrian, looking Ruth full in the face. ‘Mr. Egerton’s a man that any girl might be glad to marry. I wonder he hasn’t been snapped up long ago.’

‘Lion would have snapped him up once or twice if we had let him,’ said Mr. Adrian with a smile.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, John; you know what I mean. Look how he sits on his chair. Like a gentleman. As to Mr. Marston, I never see him tilting the dining-room chairs back but I expect to see the legs come off. He’d ruin the furniture in a decent house in a month.’

Ruth laughed, Marston had offended her mother mortally by his habit of sitting with his chair tilted.

‘You may laugh, Ruth,’ continued the old lady; ‘but if ever you have a house of your own you’ll know what it is to see your dining-room suite going to pieces before your very eyes. People that can’t sit in chairs like a Christian oughtn’t to come into respectable houses. I’m sure I expect to see him sit on the table and put his legs up the chimney some day.’

‘You’re very hard on Mr. Marston, mother,’ said Ruth; ‘he’s lived in America many years, and you know they do very curious things there.’

‘Very, my dear. Oh, I know that. And I dare say Mr. Marston’s done a good many curious things there. Of course, my dear, I haven’t forgotten what was between you once, but I hope that’ll never happen again.’

Ruth coloured and bit her lip.

Mr. Adrian noticed it, and tried to turn the conversation by talking about the weather, but Mrs. Adrian was not be so easily turned from her course.

‘It’s no good looking at me like that, John,’ she exclaimed. ‘I know what you mean. Isn’t Ruth my daughter as much as she is yours? I say I should like to see her well married; and if I was a young girl Mr. Gurth Egerton shouldn’t ask me twice—there now!’

‘But, my dear Mary,’ urged Mr. Adrian, ‘Egerton hasn’t asked Ruth once yet.’

‘Of course not. But, if I know anything, he will before very long. What do you think he comes here for?—to chatter to you about the Ojibbeways, or to hold my worsted for me? Nonsense! He comes here after Ruth—and you must all be blind if you can’t see it.’

Ruth let her mother finish. It was not quite a revelation to her, this view of Egerton’s continual visits, but it had never come home to her so thoroughly before. Her mother was quite right. She saw it all now. She must act decisively and at once.

‘Mother,’ she said, after a pause, ‘I hope you are not right. Mr. Egerton has been a very kind friend to me, and I like him as a friend and acquaintance very much. I could never look upon him in any other light.’

Ruth gathered up her work and went up to her own room. It was a habit of hers to do so when any little thing put her out.

‘There, John,’ said Mrs. Adrian, as the door closed behind her; ‘you see—I’m sure I’m right. There goes her head, turned by that fellow again. I was afraid what it would be when you let him come dangling about here again.’

‘How could I refuse him, my dear? He is an old friend of the family. He and Ruth knew each other as children. He has lived down the first rashness of his neglected youth, and is now a gentleman of means, honoured and respected. Surely I could not close my doors against a man who, heavily handicapped as young Marston has been, has yet won his way to a respectable position.’

‘Ah, well,’ exelaimed Mrs. Adrian, ‘I never did believe in him, and I never shall; and if I thought Ruth was going to fling herself away on him after all, I’d have swept him off the front door-step with a besom before ever he should have darkened these doors again.’

‘You are prejudiced, Mary. I like Mr. Egerton, and he would give Ruth a splendid establishment; but if she still loves Edward Marston, I should be the last person in the world to attempt to turn her against him.’

While Mr. and Mrs. Adrian were arranging Ruth’s future, the heroine of their conversation sat upstairs in her own little room reading a letter which she had taken from her pocket.

It had come some time ago, and she had read it again and again, but had hesitated to answer it.

It was dated from Dover, and was in the bold, dashing hand of Edward Marston:

‘Dear Ruth,

‘Do you know that to-day is the anniversary of the fatal day on which we parted long years ago? I cannot resist the temptation of writing to you; of asking you to think of the past and of all I have gone through. To-day I can offer you once more the heart you rejected then. You cannot deceive me. Your love for me has survived, as mine for you. Why should you condemn yourself and me to a lifelong mistake? Bid me hope. Only say that I may strive with some chance of winning you, and I care not to what ordeal you put my love. Send me one little line, to tell me I am not, now that fortune has smiled upon me and a brilliant future lies before me, to lose the one hope which has nerved me to the struggle, which has been the bright star at the end of the dark, rough road I have trodden for years. Ruth, my future is in your hands. Say “Hope” or “Despair.” With a fervent prayer that Heaven will guide your heart aright in a choice with which our future lives are bound up, believe me, my dear Ruth, your old, unchanged, and unchangeable sweetheart,

‘Edward Marston.’

Again and again Ruth read this letter, which woke old memories and touched many a tender chord. She honestly believed all that her lover said—that he had abandoned his old reckless life and attained the position he held by hard, honest work and the legitimate exercise of his talents. He had explained to her his early visit to Heckett’s, and he had offered to satisfy her father of his circumstances if she would only give him the right to broach the subject.

Ruth had steadily resisted every effort to break down the barrier she had erected between the past and the present, but at each assault the defence became weaker.

Her mother’s words to-night, and the full revelation to her of the object of Gurth Egerton’s constant visits, brought her face to face with the fact that her answer would have to be given some day to this new wooer.

The very appearance of another suitor seemed to warm her heart towards Marston. She almost resented the idea that any one should dare to think of her while he was still unmarried.

Gurth Egerton, in this instance, proved Marston’s best ally instead of his rival. The idea that he was in love with her so worked upon Ruth that that night she recognized more fully than ever how just were Marston’s claims. A rival disputed the field with him, and, like a true woman, she resented it.

That night she wrote a letter and addressed it to Edward Marston.

It contained only two words.

And those two words were—‘Hope. Ruth’