Acting on Ruth’s hint he determined to ingratiate himself with the Adrians as much as he could, and, if possible, cut Gurth out on his own ground.
He knew that so far as Ruth was concerned he had nothing to fear, but for her sake he was anxious that she should marry him with the full and free approbation of her parents.
He felt that she would never really be happy under any other circumstances, and, strange as it may seem, Ruth’s happiness was with him now a primary consideration. He had gradually come to love his old sweetheart again with an affection as pure and disinterested as that she felt for him.
She seemed to him, like an angel of light, to banish the darkness of the past. He never really knew how vile and wicked he had been till he looked into Ruth’s sweet eyes, and thought that one day she would bear his name.
He shuddered sometimes now as he thought of what an awful past was linked with that name. Now that Ruth had assured him of her love, now that the bright pages were open once more in his book of life, he recognized, for the first time, the depth to which he had fallen. There was much in the past about which he hesitated to think; there were secrets buried away in the bygone years of poverty and scheming which once he could remember with a smile, but which now made him tremble to think that some day they might be dragged into the glaring light of day.
‘What a different man I might have been had such a woman’s love been mine years ago!’ he thought; but never for a moment did he blame Ruth for the part she had played when his future hung in the balance.
He was innocence itself then in comparison with what he had been when he plunged, reckless and despairing, into the black abyss of crime.
Even the deed which had given him fortune, the well-planned and cleverly executed robbery which had astonished the world and left him independent of crime for the future, terrified him now.
Without it he would still have been an adventurer—he dared not have offered Ruth his hand. It was this vilely won wealth which he believed would give him all the happiness he was ever to know in the future; it was this which was to enable him to break with all his old associates and live cleanly; it was this which was to be the foundation of a genuine business career in which he might win wealth and honour legitimately; and yet he never parted with Ruth after one of those frequent interviews without wishing he had gone penniless to the grave rather than have launched out into such a crime with her image in his heart, and her sweet self the beacon that shone at the end of the long dark path and lured him on.
It seemed a treachery to her now to have linked her with such villany.