"But I left you free to seek happiness with the woman you loved, so I did you a good turn after all, Cameron Clemens. You never loved me, and you did not grieve for me. You have even been friendly with the man who lured me from you!" Miss Erroll cried, eagerly. He knew that much of her charge was true. He could deny only the last of it. "Not friendly," he said, "for we had a bitter quarrel once. But he told me you had fled from him, refusing to become his wife, after I obtained my divorce. You were untrue to both of us. So why should we become enemies for the sake of a worthless woman?" How she shivered with shame under the stinging contempt of his tones, for some womanhood lurked in her still, and she knew that she was not quite so black as she was painted. But as she quailed before his righteous wrath, Cissy came generously to the rescue, her gray eyes dark with emotion, her cheeks suffused with blushes. "Hush! do not utterly crush her with your scorn!" she cried. "Clifford Standish lied to you, the perjured villain! She did not refuse to marry him. He told her he had a wife already, and was tired of his liaison, so she fled from him in horror at her terrible position. She has been trying to lead a good life ever since, and we must not throw her back into temptation. I have forgiven her, and promised to keep her secret, and so must you." CHAPTER LII. FOR CISSY'S SAKE. "The burden of my heart, dear, There's little need to tell; There's little need to say, dear, I've loved you long and well. "And you will be my wife, dear, So may you ever bless Through all your sunny life, dear, The day you answered yes." 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. He moved closer to Cissy, catching both her trembling hands in his, and looking deep into her tearful eyes, saying, tremulously: