‘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’ CHAPTER XXXIX. THE GOLD ROBBERY. Day after day, at four o’clock in the afternoon, three gentlemen came separately into London Bridge Station and strolled about. They never spoke to each other in the station; they looked at the advertisements, perused the time-tables, and made themselves as little in the way as possible.