"I WILL RISE ABOVE MY SIN AND SHAME!"
Edith's strange visitor stood contemplating her with a look of mingled perplexity and sadness.
It was evident that she could not understand how any one could be glad to renounce a man like Emil Correlli, with the fortune and position which he could give the woman of his choice.
The two made a striking tableau as they stood there facing each other, with that beautiful child between them; for in style and coloring, they were exactly the opposite of each other.
Edith, so fair and slight, with her delicate features and golden hair, her great innocent blue eyes, graceful bearing, and cultivated manner, which plainly betrayed that she had been reared in an atmosphere of gentleness and refinement.
The other was of a far different type, yet, perhaps, not less striking and beautiful in her way.
She was of medium height, with a full, voluptuous form, a complexion of pale olive, with brilliantly scarlet lips, and eyes like "black diamonds," and hair that had almost a purple tinge in its ebon masses; her features, though far from being regular, were piquant, and when she was speaking lighted into fascinating animation with every passing emotion.
"I shall be free!" Edith murmured again with a long-drawn sigh of relief, "for of course you will assert your claim upon him, and"—with a glance at the child—"he will not dare to deny it."
"You are so anxious to be free? You would bless me for helping you to be free?" repeated her companion, studying the girl's face earnestly, questioningly.
"Ah, yes; I was almost in despair when you came in," Edith replied, shivering, and with starting tears; "now I begin to hope that my life has not been utterly ruined."