I could not speak another word just then. I could only open my arms; but with a glad look on her face, and with a joyful cry, she laid her face on my bosom. And I—I was in Heaven. My happiness was beyond all thought, all hope. It was joy unspeakable to feel her in my arms, and to know that no cloud intervened.
"Ruth," I said after a while, "I have loved you all these long years, loved you when all was darkness, and when there was no hope. When my heart was full of hatred for all else, I loved you. Ruth, I have been a sinful man, rejecting God's help, and breaking His laws, but I have loved you."
She did not answer, save to sob as though her heart were too full for utterance.
"Can you not speak some word, to me, Ruth?" I went on. "I know you must have hated me when I left you more than a year ago, for in my madness I thought that I had——"
"No, no, Roger, I never hated you," she said, quickly. "I loved you all the time. I was mad, I think—and I did not know what I was doing, and I thought I should have died when I knew you were gone."
"And now, Ruth?"
"Can you ask, Roger, after—after all you have—no, no I do not love you because of what you have done, but because I cannot help it," and she clung more closely to me.
After that I remembered little that was said, and what still remains with me I cannot write down, for such joy as mine comes to man but rarely, and cannot be told to others.
By and by the dinner bell rang, and Ruth and I entered the dining hall together, where we found Mr. Inch, still stately and upright, but growing very feeble.
He had heard of my arrival, and now gave me a hearty welcome. I learnt afterwards that he had endeavoured to do all in his power to atone for the past, and that no one could be more true and faithful than he, after he had once shaken himself free from Wilfred's coils. And I found, too, that he had constituted himself Ruth's protector, and although she often had friends to cheer her in her loneliness, to the end she regarded him as her adviser and comforter.