Cissy paused for breath, and her lover looked at her adoringly.
Never had she looked so beautiful, never had she seemed so truly noble as at this moment when so generously pleading the cause of the woman who had brought such bitter sorrow into her life.
He forgot for a moment the tall, fair, beautiful woman who hung breathlessly on his fiat of fate, and exclaimed, rapturously:
"Cissy, you are an angel!"
"Yes, she is an angel!" cried the governess, eagerly. "She is an angel, and she will forgive you all your faults and make you happy yet—so happy that you might afford to spare the poor wretch whose sins have all recoiled upon her own head with crushing weight!"
"Spare her!" pleaded Cissy, with humid eyes.
He looked back at her tenderly, and answered:
"For your sake!"
With a sob of joy, the governess fled from the room.
And with her going the last shadow that her wicked influence had cast upon their lives faded into the past.