‘Ned,’ he said—‘let me call you by the old name—if the answer to your prayer rested with me you should have it at once. But there is Ruth to be consulted. Whatever suitor comes for her—be he rich or be he poor—he must ask her for her heart ere he comes to me for her hand.’ Marston, his generally emotionless face bright with a new expression of hope, took John Adrian’s hand and clasped it. ‘Let me go now,’ he said, ‘and leave you to think of what I have said. Ask Ruth if I have her heart. If her answer be “No,” let me be still your friend. If her answer be “Yes,” then let me be your son-in-law.’ He smiled a pleasant smile, shook bands with his host, and went out hurriedly. He wanted air. A sensation most terrible had come upon him. In the midst of his joy at winning the consent of Ruth’s father so easily—just when his heart was beating quicker at the thought of Ruth’s love, which was to hallow his manhood after all—the whole tissue of lies he wrapped about his life was torn away. Hideous, monstrous, and appalling, the story seared itself in letters of flame upon his brain. What had he done? He had asked honest old John Adrian for his daughter’s hand. And when this hand was his, and they stood at God’s altar, the name of Adrian would be hers no more. Whose would she bear in its place? That of Edward Marston—liar, hypocrite, swindler, forger, thief. ‘Great heavens!’ he cried aloud, as he paced the street at a rapid rate in his excitement; ‘why have I never known this before? Why have I never seen how vile and loathsome sin was till now—now, when the greatest stake I ever played for in my life is all but won?’ Answer him, ye moralists—ye who have pried into man’s little life below with the microscope of your philosophy—ye mental dissectors, who have laid bare man’s heart and traced each separate agony to its great first cause. Tell him that the way of transgressors is hard; that it is in the prize we try most fiercely for, in the treasure we plot and plan to gain, sacrificing in the mad race for it all that is best and noblest in life, that we often find our bitterest punishment. Marston had won Ruth Adrian’s love; it was in the knowledge of possessing that which he looked upon as the crowning glory of his life that his chastisement commenced. And even while he strode through the quiet streets, his brain aflame with remorse and fear, Ruth lay, happy and blushing, with her sweet face upon her old father’s shoulder, and confessed her love in a few artless, womanly words. ‘God bless you, Ruth, my darling!’ said the old man tenderly, as he raised her face, and bent his lips to hers. ‘God bless you both!’ Can you hear it, Edward Marston? Up to the throne of the Most High, from the lips of Ruth’s father, there has gone a prayer that God will bless you both. Is it not blasphemy to link those names together in a prayer? Edward Marston and Ruth Adrian!