‘You most not give him the cheque till to-morrow to present. By that time I shall have arranged everything.’ ‘You can’t stop him talking.’ ‘No, but I can stop him ever going back to Duck’s again.’ CHAPTER XIX. GERTIE MAKES A PROMISE. Since the accidental meeting with Marston at the house of the dog-fancier, Heckett, Ruth Adrian had avoided the place. The sight of her old sweetheart had opened the floodgates of memory, and the torrent sweeping over her had washed away all that time in ten long years had piled above the remains of the hurried love. Once more it lay bare; once more her heart was filled with it. Her love had been so earnest, so real, it had permeated her whole being. It had been a task almost superhuman to crush it, but once she believed she had succeeded. Devoted to her father and mother, occupying all her spare time in acts of quiet benevolence, she had managed to find in the new life she led a means of distraction and forgetfulness of the past. But, at the sight of the idol she had so ruthlessly shattered, the structure she had reared to hide the empty pedestal crumbled away, and the work of years was undone. The meeting with her discarded lover at Heckett’s had seriously alarmed her. All through the years, hearing nothing, she had hoped that he might have altered his course of life, and in the new world to which he had gone found some good woman to be his wife who would have led him gently back into the path of rectitude. Now she knew that her hopes had not been realized. She had seen enough of the world to know that men like Marston did not associate with men like Heckett for any good. In her visits to Gertie she had gathered from the child’s innocent chatter enough to feel certain that the animals were only a blind to hide the real nature of the burly old ruffian’s business. Lying awake night after night, she pictured Marston as the leader of some desperate gang of men at war with society. She knew that his talents, if misapplied, would enable him to carry crime into the region of the fine arts, and she dreaded to think of the ultimate fate of one who had been the hero of her girlhood’s dream. Gradually she worked herself into the belief that she was responsible for this man’s sinful life. God had flung him across her path in order that she might rescue him. Perhaps she ought to have married him, and by her influence have won him from wickedness. A glorious work had been committed to her hand, and she had shrunk back like a coward. Was it too late now? Ruth Adrian shuddered as she pictured Marston hurried into crime, reckless of everything, because of her conduct to him. How could she atone now for the evil she had unwittingly wrought?