You have won her. She is yours for better for worse; she is yours, and will bear your name; her fate is linked with yours, her life bound up in you, until one of you shall kiss the cold lips of the other for the last time. And between you for ever there must hang a veil—a veil that must hide from the sight of all men, and from her, the ghastly skeletons that lie in the grave of your sinful past. Pray God now, as you never prayed before, then, that this grave may not give up its dead—that no spectre may arise to cry, ‘Thou art the man!’ and drag you down to shame and degradation in the sunniest hours of your first pure happiness. From the moment Ruth Adrian links her life with yours you cannot fall alone. CHAPTER XLVI. SMITH AND CO. DISSOLVE PARTNERSHIP. Edward Marston was engaged to Ruth Adrian, and was received by her parents as her accepted suitor. Mrs. Adrian, when the news of Marston’s offer was communicated to her, was first indignant and then tearful. She prophesied the most terrible disasters; she charged Ruth with wishing to disgrace the family, and vowed that she would never be civil to him—never! She declared that the day Ruth married him she would cast her off for ever, and finally relieved her feelings by turning upon her husband and denouncing him as a monster in human shape, for ever giving his sanction to such an arrangement. She declared that Mr. Adrian would have given Ruth to a Red Indian, if that noble savage had only asked him; and she indulged in a half-sarcastic sketch of her poor daughter being united with Red Indian ceremonies to a bridegroom dressed principally in a necklace of scalps, and suggested that if the marriage feast had consisted of cold boiled missionaries, no doubt Mr. Adrian would have accepted an invitation, and expected her to do the same. ‘My dear Mary,’ exclaimed Mr. Adrian, half amused and half annoyed, ‘what on earth has Ned Marston to do with Red Indians and their marriage ceremonies? He isn’t a Red Indian.’ ‘No!’ groaned the lady; ‘I’d sooner he was. He’s worse. I always disliked him, and I always shall. What do you know about him? What is he but an adventurer? And what are you going to say to Mr. Egerton, I should like to know?’ ‘You needn’t trouble yourself about Mr. Egerton, my dear; he has left the country.’ ‘What?’ ‘Yes. I have ascertained at his house that he has gone on a voyage to America, and no one knows when he will be back.’ ‘Well, I’m sure!’ exclaimed Mrs. Adrian; ‘and never so much as to call on us to say “Good-bye “!’ ‘It was not polite, was it?’ ‘Polite! But there, I never liked the man. He couldn’t look at you straight in the face.’